[Waverley ARS] WARS Meeting 20 9 06

[Colin Marks]

Tnx Simon for comments
 Magazines and WARS "library". 

I agree that interest in magazines and other publications is minimal and putting much effort into a system would certainly not be justified.
However this could be partly due to the fact that
    a. The stuff we have had has been mainly out-of-date and is now irrelevant rubbish (except for serious radio historians such as Simon). 20 year old copies of ARRL Handbook may be of archival interest but not much else.
    b. What we had has been kept in a messy state with no easy access (althogh I know Simon has worked hard on listing it)
    c.  There is a great deal of info available on the internet and in web based archives.

I do not suggest that we start anything elaborate - just throw out everything we have which no one ever uses and buy say a dozen or so NEW publications with some method of keeping strict track of them (difficult...). I do not have in mind keeping magazines. Any one who wants AR should join WIA (Fed).
I mentioned QST on the basis I could make my subscription copies available to members to use (or lose) as they wish. They are each about 150  pages (monthly) and I have no wish to keep them after reading them unless there is something there that could be of future use to me. (rare).
However I find QST a good "read" with lots of interesting news and information. It is particularly interesting to see the very extensive adverts about all sorts of equipment (even if you're not in the market to buy...). Also there are some very thorough and expert reviews of new equipment.

Of course before going to any trouble we should be on the alert for the old syndrome - everyone says  what a great idea  - work goes into setting it up - and no one uses it.....

I suppose this will all be too late for to-nights meeting which unfortunately I cannot attend.

73         Colin         VK2LV






----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Simon Buxton" <sb at cactii.net>
To: "Colin Marks" <colmar at pacific.net.au>
Cc: "WARS" <members at cactii.net>
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 12:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Waverley ARS] WARS Meeting 20 9 06


> Hi Colin
> 
> I wonder how useful publications are to members? We have had plenty of 
> magazines and books for many years but there has been no interest in any 
> of them. The magazines have now all been disposed of. Those published 
> since the 1960s elicit little interest by anyone and have to be given or 
> thrown away. We have quite a good reference library of books, but again 
> there is little interest.
> 
> I believe the reasons for lack of interest have been that people only 
> want details relating to a particular topic or reference books (eg on 
> antenna building) and do not know what the club has. To remedy this, 
> over the past year I have compiled a list of our books and posted it on 
> our web site, but it has never been practical for us to list magazine 
> contents. Despite this web site listing as far as I know, no-one has 
> asked for anything.
> 
> As a collector of old radios, I have built up quite a library of 
> reference books and also some early magazines, however indexing the 
> latter is a real problem. I have created an index for the HRSA journals 
> since it is hard searching paper copies. This is freely available of the 
> net and many find it useful.
> 
> 73 Simon
> 
> Colin Marks wrote:
>> Dear Jim
>> Please tender my apology for absence from this meeting.
>> My lack of attendance lately is in no way due to lack of interest - 
>> due more to lack of domestic liaison here re competing events....
>> BTW - I have been a member of ARRL now for a few months and I have 
>> accumulated a few monthly issues of QST which I find all quite 
>> interesting. I will bring some along to the next meeting.
>> I am sending you and members by separate email copy of catalogue of 
>> publications available from ARRL which you will see is very extensive. 
>> Some of the publications are quite new and aimed at newcomers.
>> It seems to me that the Club could well use some of its surplus funds 
>> to buy a few of these items. However I think it would first be 
>> _essential_ to have in place a system for _securing_ them and for 
>> keeping strict track of them if borrowed for home use.
>>  
>> 73         Colin         VK2LV
>>  
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>   
> 
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