The Association for Mexican Cave Studies has way too many eggs in one
basket. Actual caving aside, I'm doing pretty much everything, with
some help here and there. As a result, a lot of potentially useful
things aren't getting done. A substantial catalog of potential paper-
work type projects follows. Some of them can be done anywhere, and
some can most conveniently be done at my house, where all the AMCS
stuff is in my basement. (There are multiple computers, printers, and
scanners here.) If anyone is interested in any of these exciting
opportunities, contact me. I might be interested in working with you
on some of them, as long as I have the encouragement of knowing that
at least one other person cares. I'm not a great fan of "work nights,"
feeling that if more than two or three cavers get together it's more
like a party than a time when anything requiring intellectual
attention gets done, but I'm open to suggestions. The AMCS can afford
materials such as file folders, notebooks, CD-Rs, etc. if not donated.
--Bill Mixon, AMCS sales and editor
Katie Arens and I maintain the existing AMCS web site www.amcs-
pubs.org. It is simple and adequate as a publications catalog, but a
lot more could be done with it. A gung-ho webmaster would be nice.
(But it would also be nice if the site didn't get too gonzo in
appearance and stayed easy to navigate. The present stuff is written
as HTML text files. I know that's a bit primitive. Updated site
should at least be done with some common software in a straight-
forward way, so if the webmaster falls down a pit someone else can
easily take it over.) Denver Hopkins and the Houston Grotto currently
provide the web server.
A treasurer to actually balance our monthly bank statements and maybe
prepare an annual rough summary of how much we've spent on printing
and postage versus how much income we've gotten. Could take over
dealing with our PayPal account, although that's being well handled by
Katie Arens now. Not a lot of work. I keep a running tab of
miscellaneous small expenses. I write only three or four AMCS checks a
year, mostly to reimburse myself for printing expenses. There are only
two or three deposits a month, including PayPal withdrawals.
Someone to maintain the AMCS e-mail list and send out the occasional
announcements. The main problem with the way I'm doing it now is that
there is no provision in the list, which is a simple text file, for
keeping track of why and when someone was added or when someone has
last bought something. Hence the list only grows, and it needs
pruning. A computer-clever person could keep the list as an Excel file
or database of some sort and then recreate the text file that the e-
mail software needs on demand. Butch Fralia and the Maverick Grotto
currently provide the bulk e-mail capability.
We have neither ISBNs for our bulletin and reprint books nor an ISSN
for the AMCS Activities Newsletter. Someone might check into what's
involved in getting such things and whether there would be any point
in it for us.
Somebody who loves Googling could compile an archive of everything he
can find on the web about caves of Mexico. This would be kept on CD or
DVD (see comments about cataloging below) and also such pages as can
reasonably be printed kept as paper archive, too. New items should be
called to the attention of the editor as possible sources of articles
or at least news notes for "Mexico News."
Someone should keep a permanent record on disk and paper of the
postings to the Mexican Iztacochitla e-mail list. Knowledge of Spanish
essential to cataloging the stuff. Would also see that the editor is
informed of potential articles or "Mexican News" stuff.
The AMCS ought to have a nice table-top display publicizing our
actitivies and publications--the sort of thing that cave conservancies
and such have on display at NSS conventions. It should be very
portable (like three sheets of 1/8 inch hardboard hinged together).
Provision for making it self-supporting for places where tables aren't
available (such as at TCR) might be made. The display might be
designed to incorporate a digital picture frame in locations where the
power is available--a sure attention-getter. If someone is interested
in working up such a thing by the time of this summer's NSS convention
(August), decide soon, so that exhibit space can be reserved.
We are now six issues behind in compiling an index to caves and places
in the AMCS Actitivies Newsletter. I find the existing indexes to
numbers 1-25 very useful when answering queries or looking for old
references to add to AMCS Activities Newsletter articles, and
presumably others do, too. Links to the existing indexes are at www.amcs-pubs.org/nl/
. The file for numbers 16-25 is available to be added to. Expect
something like 2000 additions for 26-31. (I did 16-25, and it was
about 3400 entries.) It would also be very helpful if the old index
for 1-15 were merged into the index for later issues. This would be a
bit of a research project, however, because the 1-15 index does not
give the Mexican state that the caves are in, whereas the newer one
does.
There are a couple of efforts underway to make on-line cave info
databases. One is KarstBase, an on-line bibliography being created by
the Speleogenesis group in Ukraine. See www.network.speleogenesis.info/directory/bibliography/karstbase/index.php
. This appears to be an Excel file of article abstracts. English-
language versions of abstracts of AMCS Activities Newsletter articles
are available from me for recent issues. For older issues, abstracts
need to be written or the published Spanish versions back-translated.
The other is the Karst Information Portal at www.karstportal.org,
being created in the US. These should be investigated to see what the
AMCS might reasonably do to make our work more accessible. This is
especially important because the older AMCS publications are not
represented in the ongoing (I hope--most recent issue was 2004)
international bibliography Spelelogical Abstracts. Yvonne Droms is
seeing that our current publications get listed there.
Speaking of bibliographies, the Mexico pages of the fifty or so
printed annual international bibliographies I have should be
photocopied into one notebook for convenient access. They could also
be scanned and perhaps added to AMCS web site.
There are a lot of articles about Mexican caves in miscellaneous
places in my personal library, such as British caving magazines and
journals, the Speleo Digests, or the Canadian Caver. These things
ought to be photocopied and put in the AMCS archives. This could best
be done after the last item (assembling the international
bibliographies) to aid in the search.
CATALOGS. The AMCS possesses a considerable number of publications,
maps, photos, paper notes of one sort or another. These things need to
be sorted through and cataloged. Trying to arrange things by filing or
storage is a system that always breaks down when, for example, an
article mentions caves in more than one state. My idea is that things
should be stored apparently randomly (e.g., miscellanous paper
documents in file folders in the order in which they are acquired) and
then records kept in catalogs so they can be retrieved. With
apologies to a certain Texas caver who likes to create fancy Windows
programs, I think a suitable catalog would consist of an Excel file
with three columns for data entry: the location (for example, file
folder 243 item 12 or CD #45, file 1546), a text description of the
item (for example, "original manuscript for Act. Nl. 31 article; see
keywords"), and keywords (for example, "Tixik K'una, Jim Coke, QR"). I
have an idea of what additional calculated columns such an Excel file
would need to have to make it easy to do flexible searches for one or
more words in one or more of the fields. But if there's someone who is
an expert at programming Excel, please get in touch. Such a simple,
common file format can be viewed or printed by pretty much anybody and
exported to text document or HTML with a few keystrokes. A format
should be decided on before any of the cataloging projects gets going,
so the various catalogs are consistent and could perhaps be merged.
Peter Sprouse is already working on a catalog of the caves themselves.
AMCS library catalog (books and periodicals). This could be done
anywhere, but there are about two bookcases of the stuff in my
basement, so it would probably be most convenient to do it here. It
shouldn't take too long. It would include looking for any Mexico items
in journals not specifically dedicated to Mexico and compiling a list
of them. (They might also be photocopied for the paper archives,
especially in cases where we might not want to keep the journals.)
Might also watch for probably rare references to Texas, too, for
TexBib. Some of the library materials are old copies of obscure
European caving magazines that the AMCS once exchanged with, and we
might decide to donate some of those to the NSS library or the TSS
library once they are gleaned of anything of Mexico interest. Someone
also needs to make sure that the library has a copy of everything we
sell.
Large maps catalog. We have a good number of large cave maps in flat
files in my basement (and a few that haven't been flattened out for
storage yet), plus a small number of topo maps. Some of the stuff is
obsolete--pencil drafts of maps that have since been published, for
example. Some is still useful but is in such poor shape (yellowed
ammonia-process copies) that they should be Xeroxed and/or scanned.
Sorting, weeding, preserving, and cataloging needed. You might even
discover some finished but unpublished maps.
We've accumulated quite a pile of CDs--original material submitted for
publication, backups of files involved in preparing publications,
copies of some web sites, etc. These need cataloging and arranging for
proper safe storage (in jewel boxes on edge). Duplicates of many of
the most important are already stored off-site at TSS office. This
needs to be done more systematically. Could be done elsewhere than my
basement.
We have what probably adds up to a dozen file drawers of miscellaneous
paper archives. A large fraction of the stuff is paperwork leading up
to our publications over the past ten years, including original
manuscripts, correspondence with authors, lists of photo captions, and
so on. (Some of that stuff, especially the correspondence, could be
weeded out.) We've recently been given three boxes of files on Mexican
caves, including a lot of things like article reprints or photocopies.
There are miscellaneous copies of articles from other sources (and
some other stuff that should be forthcoming from some of the efforts
outlined in other paragraphs here). Cataloging and filing this stuff
would be a big job (which of course could be done over a period of
time), but it is important because otherwise a lot of it is
inaccessible--I have no idea what's in those three boxes, for example.
And I'm sure other cavers have material they'd send to the NSS for
archiving, but I haven't felt like we should beg for it if all we were
doing was keeping it warm and dry. Material could be hauled off in
batches for cataloging away from my house.
We've accumulated a lot of photographs, all, or mostly all, in digital
form. Most of these are photos submitted with articles, including a
lot of unpublished ones, but there are many others as well. These
should be cataloged, including source, caption info, some indication
of pixel size, etc. (But, again, put this stuff in simple text
description, not elaborate database. One Texas group has been fussing
for years over a format for its database of archive photographs,
instead of just doing it.) These are currently scattered over lots of
disks, some the original material submissions, some the working disk
archives for the various publications, and some on disks dedicated to
photographs. They should be, as well as cataloged, consolidated onto
fewer disks. "Contact sheets" (as in Photoshop's Automate -> Contact
Sheet II) might be printed and put in notebooks for convenient
preliminary searching without having to load the CDs. Much of this
could be done anywhere, but a lot of the caption info is only in the
paper archives from back issues of publications.
Not particularly essential if the other indexes and catalogs exist,
giving access to a particular map if needed, but a dedicated digital
collection of cave maps could be made, something on the order of the
TSS Texas cave maps collection. This would involve a lot of scanning
of old pubished maps, among other things. Could be mostly done anywhere.
And what have I left out?
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