AFU quo vadis?

On Friday, December 16. 2016 the AFU board held its annual meeting at one of the foundation premises in Norrköping. Detailed annual reports of 2014-2015 were submitted by Anders Liljegren and can be studied at the AFU website. They are an excellent summary of the intense work and far-reaching activities during the last two years. But the prospects for 2017 represent a real challenge for the foundation. The Swedish government has put a complete stop for the so-called "phase three" subsidies from the Employment Office. This means that our economy will be drastically reduced, starting July 1, 2017. We will lose all phase three personnel and perhaps also the three salaried employees? So now we ask ourselves - AFU quo vadis?

The AFU board. Anders Liljegren, Carl-Anton Mattsson, Clas Svahn, Håkan Blomqvist, Tobias Lindgren

We are at present working hard on all fronts trying to secure our economy for the future. Our sponsors and friends of the archive have been alerted to the difficult time we are now facing and I wish to express my deep gratitude to those who have become new sponsors. With enough new sponsors we will be able to pay the rent and electricity for our many premises and keep the basic archival activities going. If you find our work of importance go to the Your sponsorship site, where all information of how to support AFU can be found. At this time we really need all the help we can get - from all over the world.

A minor change in the AFU board was decided. Clas Svahn was elected chairman and I vice chairman. We thought this was a good idea because Clas travel all around the world, representing AFU, trying to secure donations of UFO and Fortean archives to AFU. This activity has rendered him a new title, The Viking Raider. After the annual meeting all the AFU staff enjoyed the traditional Christmas dinner at the Elite Grand Hotel Norrköping.

AFU Christmas dinner

Even though 2017 will be a real challenge for the AFU board we are in good spirits, doing our very best and hoping that The Force will be with us in the future. 

To my friends on this planet 

and on other planets and spheres in the multiverse

I wish you all

A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year

AFU Downloads

Without libraries and archives we have no history, only anecdotes, myths and hazy memories. Without archives and libraries serious and scientific research becomes very difficult and in some areas almost impossible. When Kjell Jonsson, Anders Liljegren and I founded AFU in March 1973 our primary objective was UFO research. But we soon found out that this venture required large amounts of data, compiled and gathered by earlier investigators - ergo a library as a first priority.

Kjell Jonsson at work with our first two book shelves at his home, August 1977

About 40 years later

In our first AFU Newsletter, March-April 1975 I wrote: "We consider a well-functioning, orderly and extensive library to be one of the most crucial pre-requisites for UFO research. The problem of locating and acquiring specific, often privately published literature, in a short time and without to much expenditure, we found to be a great obstacle in our own investigations. By easy access to a specialized UFO library these problems are greatly diminished. "

Today AFU is the worlds largest UFO and Fortean library and archive. Now we are faced with the challenge in the digital age of making as much of this information easily accessible by researchers around the globe, ufologists, academic scholars, journalists and all who are interested in our subjects, whether "believers" or "skeptics". There are many similar projects going on around the world with subjects close to or connected with ufology. One example is The International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals (IAPSOP). Another example is FOTA, The Friends of Theosophical Archives, with the object to promote knowledge of, and support for, the Theosophical archives across the world.

At the AFU website you can download our very extensive book catalogue, 26.000 titles and our catalogue of serial publications, including more than 73.000 issues. We are now working hard getting permission to make aviable as many UFO magazines for digitizing and download as possible. Here Isaac Koi from London has made a tremendous effort of which we are most grateful. Isaac also has an excellent website. Magazines for download you can find by clicking Collections at the AFU website.

Swedish ufologists will find digitized versions of several magazines. All the 52 issues of AFU Newsletter and also UFO-Sweden´s first magazine UFO-Information 1969-1980.

There are at present 121 different UFO magazines to download from many countries and in different languages. Here you find classics like APRO Bulletin 1952-1987, Saucers, Space & Science, all 64 issues and Max Miller´s Saucers published between 1953-1960. Happy reading!