I see from the minutes of the NSS Board of Governors meeting on March
15 that the Speleo Digest series, the last issue of which was for
2003, is now officially dead. That's a shame, but it seems to
acknowledge reality. The series reprinted the best material out of
grotto newsletters during the title year, and was essentially _the_
library of American caves and caving. It was started by the Pittsburgh
Grotto in 1956. Production was taken over by the NSS for the 1964 issue.
I edited and prepared two or three issues back around 1970. The amount
of material in each issue has more than doubled since then; the 2003
has almost 600 pages of three-column small type. On the other hand, I
had to retype everything on a typewriter and assemble the pages with
scissors and paste. Modern technology and the ability to request files
for most of the articles from the publishing grottos ought to have
compensated, it seems to me, but nevertheless getting it out proved to
be beyond volunteers. Of course as the years went by, the interest in
working on an issue years out of date decreased. (The 2003 didn't
actually come out until 2007.)
Many of the more recent issues are available as PDF files on the NSS
web site at
https://secure.caves.org/nss-business/publications/Speleo_Digest/index.shtml
NSS members will have to log on with their NSS number and zip code.
Many are also available to anybody at the Karst Information Portal
http://www.karstportal.org/search/site
Search for Speleo Digest.
Without the Speleo Digest, a lot of great cave explorations and maps
published locally are essentially inaccessible. Sigh. -- Bill Mixon
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