journal back issues

[Adam Blatner]

Dear All, we've had some people who have expressed interest and I've forwarded their 
opening offer to Christine Policino of Heldref. We'll see what comes of that.
    As for Linda's email of  December 17:  I can't afford anything right now, but I am 
wondering if there could be a fund raiser at the conference to buy them for the archives, 
or if a grant of some sort might be available ....Linda Ciotola

             She brings up an interesting issue, i.e., the function of the archives.

One function of course is to hold on to stuff that is generally hard-to-find or otherwise 
unavailable.
    A second function, yet to be realized, is closer to a library function: Can people in 
the community access these archives? Can they come and visit, pour through them?
      For a fee, can they copy materials for their own needs?
           For an additional fee---possibly substantial--- would there be anyone who would 
copy and mail papers to those requesting?
   For another fee for time spent, what about scanning on pages, papers, articles, books? 
Would a charge of $0.20 per page, or $2.00 per page, or what, be required?
         I suspect these questions aren't ready to be answered, but wondered if they had 
been asked?

      As scan-on and optical recognition software becomes more available, the main cost is 
time. For example, I would be willing to scan on any paper for a charge of $2.00 per page 
plus postage to mail the stuff (including cost of envelope).
      (Scanning on, formatting into file form, and emailing takes a number of moves, not 
just one click; takes some time.)

   What think you?

    Warmly, Adam