A lot of good points here. And I especially liked the last line, but more to the subject, one of the things we all have to keep in mind about archiving this and that is that it is human nature to not consider things as being of historical importance until 100 or so years later. What happens then is that those who follow immediately after see no value in things, they are discarded and then much later historians and such lament the fact. But even there, I know that I wonder how much historical importance these may really have to a future generation without context.
While QSL's are a part of history, some of the prior comments raise the point of how many are too many, and many of us have acknowledged that we have mostly rather common QSL's. And how many of those do we need ? Not all of us have approached this as Ben Dangerfield has, only verifying foreign catches - probably most have not, but in that way Ben is out ahead of the rest of us because he culled his from the start. With recordings, comes another issue, namely how much has the frequent changing of call signs in the US over the past done to devalue our recordings of them ? And is the value of these recordings more of an aircheck than anything else. I have too many recordings in the sense that I have multiples of a lot of GY stations which at some point I'll also have to cull to find the best ones. Further, because my records will only permit me to associate some of these with an actual reception date ( given that the electronic signature reflects when I pulled the clip rather than the date of reception, and that I don't add multiple relogs to my overall log ). This is where the question as to whether or not the format in which mine are saved ( mp3 ) will be recoverable at any given point in the future. Thus I have asked myself the question of why should I worry about saving them at all ? It isn't like I go back and listen to them aside from those from the 1970's in NJ which I am slowly working through to get individual clips. Just some more food for thought, I guess. Russ Edmunds 15 mi NNW of Philadelphia Grid FN20id <[email protected]> -------------------------------------------- On Sat, 3/15/14, Scott Fybush <[email protected]> wrote: Subject: Re: [NRC-AM] More on mergers To: [email protected] Date: Saturday, March 15, 2014, 9:49 PM Thank you, Les. Without turning this into a discussion of any one particular individual, I'd submit that there's something dysfunctional when we hear (often from the same mouths) that "nobody's stepping forward to volunteer to carry things on"...and then when someone does, the response is less "thanks for volunteering" and more "you're doing it wrong." With respect to the question of paying for club membership, I think some have lost sight of what those payments are supposed to be for. NRC, IRCA and WTFDA are all nonprofit, volunteer organizations. Unless I'm mistaken, none of us draw any salary for anything we do. The clubs have no buildings or physical facilities to maintain. So what those membership dues have primarily covered, historically, was the real-world cost of distributing information in physical form - printing and postage of club bulletins, duplication and postage for DXAS, printing and storage of books and reprints and Logs and such. There was a fairly clear cost-for-value connection: if it cost 50 cents each to print bulletins and another 50 cents each to mail them, and the bulletin went out 30 times a year, and dues were about $30...well, that was the cost you HAD to pay to get the information you could only get in the bulletin. It's true, in a general way, that there's a cost to participating in today's world of virtual information distribution - you have to have some sort of broadband connection and some sort of device with which to connect. It's precisely BECAUSE those costs exist and are already borne by the end user that there's significant resistance from younger DXers to paying additional fees for information that they (correctly) figure they can get elsewhere for free. Because the membership of all of our clubs is predominantly older, we're still bound to the concept that "membership" has to be something exclusive that comes with some sort of price tag attached. But consider: if nobody in the club gets paid to edit or lay out DXN (or DXM, or VUD), and if there's no longer a cost involved in printing or mailing a piece of a dead tree, and if our mission is in fact to grow the hobby of DXing rather than just grow old talking about it...what, exactly, is the downside of simply posting the PDF or the MP3 to a Facebook page or a Google group for anyone who's interested to read/listen and enjoy? And if they read it and enjoy it and want to participate by sending in a logging or contacting a local station for a DX test or coming to a convention, call them a "member" and be done with it? All of a sudden, a club struggling to stay above 500 members might be a 1000-member club. And if a bunch of those new "members" just read and don't give much back...well, how is that really any different than the hundreds of DXN readers who pay just barely enough to cover the cost of printing and mailing (if even) and never send in a logging? This is what "clubs" look like in the 21st century. It's not the model many of us are accustomed to, I know. I have no illusions that the legacy clubs will go this way. I also have no illusions, as a result, that the legacy clubs will be around by the time I hit retirement age. Shooting the messengers who tell you the world is changing around you just leaves you with a pile of dead messengers and a world that's still changing... s _______________________________________________ The NRC AM mailing list Questions? [email protected] Antenna Pattern Book Now Shipping AM Radio Log is now shipping! FM Atlas 21st Edition Close Out Prices! 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