So, I would like to welcome and thank everyone who has joined or become a watcher so far.
We’re thrilled with the response. This is a group that needs a lot of people—the more people taking an interest, the better it’s going to work. 
Here is a round-up of all the personal experience and knowledge on offer in our database at the moment:
The Past
’70s and ‘80s: SCFrankles was a child in the ‘70s and a teenager in the ‘80s (in the UK).
Travel and Home
Israel: AspiredWriter is a resident of Israel.
India: BlueSapphire2000 is a resident of India.
Skills and Work
I Was an Over-The-Road Truck Driver: Edges-to-Everything spent a decade driving tractor-trailer trucks across the United States and Canada, has held a commercial driver's license since 1984, and has driven in all 48 contiguous United States and in most of the Canadian provinces.
Land surveying: Eremitik is in the land surveying field and is familiar with a variety of different land terrain types, research techniques, reading maps and the use of compasses and survey technology.
Education
Co-Education: wei-en’s first year of high school was the first year the school transitioned into co-education.
Family
Raised By One Parent: SCFrankles was brought up by her widowed father.
Health
Heart Transplant: anapests-and-ink has experienced the process as a close family member and caregiver.
Personal
Synaesthesia: SCFrankles associates colours with letters and numbers.
Culture
Plains Indians: xlntwtch lived on a reservation with US American Indians and travelled with them, knows about the culture of several Plains Indian tribes, and married into the Southern Arapaho tribe.
Science
live animal lab and laboratory science: neurotype-on-discord has worked in animal labs, has run a pilot study on anorexia, assisted with some SSRI and dopamine studies, has run experiments and assays on Alzheimer's mouse models and a mouse model with cerebellar disruptions potentially comparable to autism, and is happy to assist with paper interpretation. Essentially: “if your source looks like bullshit I will tell you.”
Astronomy: C-A-Harland has done a fair amount of research into astronomy, including the life cycles of stars, formations of planets, black holes and galaxies.
If any of those areas would be useful for your writing research, please contact the Deviant directly by sending them a note! If you want to make a submission to the database yourself, the information is on our profile.
Requests
On to the other aspect of the group: we want to take requests for information too.
If you need someone else’s personal experience or knowledge as help with your writing research, and it isn’t in the database, leave a comment here. We’ll gather all the requests together and put them out as another journal, asking if anyone can help. Though if someone reading this journal sees a request in the comments they can help with, please feel free to contact the requester immediately.
You can make a request at any time—leave a comment on whatever is the current journal or on the group profile, or send us a note. It isn’t necessary to be a member or a watcher to make a request, but it would be lovely if you joined in.
