Newbie question

[JohnR]

Not sure best place to ask this - but here goes.

Just joined the society and recieved my "pack" along with the 009 News. Can I get hold of back issues of the News either as hard copy or electronically?

[Graeme Dunbar]

John,

Scans of back issues of the 009 Society News used to be available but I've not seen any mention of them recently. It was a private enterprise by one of our members if I remember correctly.

Given that the magazine must be produced electronically it is a pity that an archive, at least for more recent years, is not available. Other groups and societies do it, but their newsletters are often more primitive and possibly much easier to turn into relatively compact PDF files. Perhaps it is worth raising with the Chairman and Editor?

Occasionally collections come up through Members Sales  or advertised in the News itself.

[ECMT]

Hi John. I made the same request for scanned back issues on CD to be made available. No luck unfortunately. Try contacting the new OO9 Soc chairman to see if you can get anywhere. On the Soc's website there is a "Members Services" section with nothing in it. Maybe back issues could be placed and made available for download from there ?

Cheers
Len

[JulienW]

Not sure best place to ask this - but here goes.

Just joined the society and recieved my "pack" along with the 009 News. Can I get hold of back issues of the News either as hard copy or electronically?

That depends how far back you want to go, JohnR.

It is worth contacting Alan Rolfe (Membership Secretary) to see what he might have in stock. Alan is the first person to contact in cases of your News going missing in the post, and as such he ususally has a small number of back issues on hand.  Another point of contact would be Bill Luty (Publicity Officer) who also has stocks of 009 News that he passes to interested members of the public at the shows he attends, and his stocks sometimes going back over 18 months to 2 years.  Both of their contact details are in 009 News (on page 3), but please bear in mind that sending a bundle of back issues of 009 News via Royal Mail might not be too cheap and if I were making such an enquiery I would at least offer to meet the postage costs involved.

It is also worth asking Brian Guilmant (Sales Officer), as bundles of back issues sometimes turn up when a member changes scale (and sells up to buy soemthing bigger) or from their estate.

Beyond that there are a number of members who have a full set of back issues who are prepared, if asked, to scan and e-mail specific articles on request.  However, this is not an official Society service, just the sort of thing that happens in a friendly Society such as ours, and as someone with a full set of 009 News (though perhaps not a full set of marbles) I have done this in the past (and I'll send a hard copy in return for an SAE and something towards the copying costs if that works for you) as long at it is for non-commercial purposes.



There are a number of issues with respect to putting back issues of 009 News onto the website or onto CD:

Someone would have to manually scan the earlier issues and then place them in a useable format.  This invloves a surprisingly large ammount of paper and comuting time as, to the best of my knowledge, the News only started to be produced in a suitable format in 2003 (i.e. when Simon Coward as Editor started to use inDesign), and the issues I have going from there back to the beginning (September 1973) fill a box that once contained reams of A4 paper - this might give an idea of the work involved.  Remember that this work would have to be done on a voluntary basis by someone, and it's not as if the current Committee are blesed with huge ammounts of free time once their 9-5 job and their own Committe jobs have been finished for the day (let alone any model making time), as I found when I was Secretary.  It is not that it will never happen, it's just that it will take some time to do.

There is also the issue of copyright.  Someone who writes something for the News would expect it to be published in the News - they will have submitted it to the Editor for this purpose - but woud they expect it to be put in another Society publication or on a CD which the Society would have to sell to recoup some of the costs in production, or even to make a small profit for Society funds?  What about putting it on the internet for anyone / everyone to see?  If they have not been asked how can anyone be sure that they will not object and (potentially) take the Society to court.  This could end up costing the Society huge sums of money in costs and compensation - which remember is the money you have paid, both in subscriptions and the comissions from Brian's sales.  I am fairly certain that if asked those contributors would give permission, but again it takes time to ask and get these permissions, made difficult when the author / photographer / draftsman is no longer a Society member (as someone would have to find them first) or where they have died and someone would need to establish who holds the estate before the question could be asked.

Again, it is not something that will never happen, its just that it will take time once someone is found who is prepared to do the job.

So by all means ask the question of our new Chairman, but be prepared to wait a while for things to happen - unless you wish to put your own free time toward the project yourself.

[RJSRdg]

As far as 'public access' to articles on the website is concerned, other societies (e.g MERG) have members-only areas on their websites (indeed of course even this forum is a members' only area) so it shouldn't be difficult to set up an area of the website for members to access back issues.

As has already been stated, current issues are produced in an electronic form before printing so should be easy to add to the site as part of the production process.

Perhaps a partial solution to the scanning time issue would be to allow members access to deposit files in the area so that when one member scans a page in for another, instead of emailing it to the person who has requested it, all members have access thus preventing the article becoming a subject of further scanning requests. (If all the files had a common format file name e.g. YYYYMMPgX-Y such that 201001Pg3-5 has pages 3-5 of the January 2010 issue, the list should be easy to search).

Of course, complete magazines probably don't need to be there anyway - I would imagine that Branchlines, Brian's lists and the Diary have a rather limited 'shelf life' for a start.

Richard 

[JohnR]

On the scanning front this can be easily done these days by use of modern photocopies which I am sure a few of us have access to in our places of work. Just need the hard copies to work with.

I would doubt the copyright problems can be a problem as long as access was limited to members only eg via members only section on forums or by electronic post. It would be important that they were stored also as a PDF file as that also makes copying more difficult.

Sorry about starting a question that is turning into a "monster" :D

[garrywhiting]

On the scanning front this can be easily done these days by use of modern photocopies which I am sure a few of us have access to in our places of work. Just need the hard copies to work with.
I would doubt the copyright problems can be a problem as long as access was limited to members only eg via members only section on forums or by electronic post. It would be important that they were stored also as a PDF file as that also makes copying more difficult.

We are actually talking about 6000 A4 pages here, so it cannot be easily done!
And copyright is an issue that cannot be ignored, even within a restricted members only access site. It would in fact be "republishing" as with new edition of a previously out of print book. So the permission for each and every article by each and every author would be required.

[david788]

We are actually talking about 6000 A4 pages here, so it cannot be easily done!
And copyright is an issue that cannot be ignored, even within a restricted members only access site. It would in fact be "republishing" as with new edition of a previously out of print book. So the permission for each and every article by each and every author would be required.

Thanks, Garry.
It's interesting that others seem to have a very different take on the copyright issue. The Industrial Railway Society is gradually making the back issues of Industrial Railway Record freely available on its web site. I think the only restriction is that any back issues still available for purchase (of which there are a good number) are to be excluded. Since the early issues date from the 60s and 70s and include 'letters' pages, it can hardly have been possible to contact every 'author' or their successors.
These pages provide a very good advert for the society as they frequently come up in web searches. I guess this was felt to be of more value than trying to restrict them to members only.

[garrywhiting]

[Thanks, Garry.
It's interesting that others seem to have a very different take on the copyright issue. The Industrial Railway Society is gradually making the back issues of Industrial Railway Record freely available on its web site. I think the only restriction is that any back issues still available for purchase (of which there are a good number) are to be excluded. Since the early issues date from the 60s and 70s and include 'letters' pages, it can hardly have been possible to contact every 'author' or their successors.
These pages provide a very good advert for the society as they frequently come up in web searches. I guess this was felt to be of more value than trying to restrict them to members only.

Well, mine is an extremely cautious view, since this matter has still to be tested at Law. But the UK takes a stricter line on copyright than some others, and one proposed Society publication has already had to be cancelled because the original authors' permissions were not obtained at the outset of the project, and retrospective permission was denied.

[JulienW]

Something I recall with the IRS on line back issues is that there were some gaps, both with individual issues not being available and missing articles within an otherwise available issue (to the point were some issues were reprisented by a single article).  One wonders if this is because no one has scanned them yet, or that copyright issues have come into play and that permission was not given (or those concerned could not be found)?  Equally there is a limitation on copyright (something like 25 years?) depending on the type of material so perhaps this has come into play for the IRS and has allowed them to re-publish the older issues? Even so, it is only polite to ask...

Equally, the front page of the IRS archive section reinforces that the material is copyright of the IRS and the originating Authors / Photographers.  Perhaps our Committee should have a chat with the IRS comittee to see how they have sorted out the issues as it might be a way forward (or not) for our Society's publication.

To come back to my post I think that if people are asked at the start (and the result is not being done to make a profit) then they are more likely to say 'yes' than 'no'.  As Garry points out the problems are more likely to arise if such permissions are not obtained at the outset, and even more problems arise if consent is assumed and things published!

It might be concievable to have an anthology of material from 009 News where re-publication had been granted, or alternatively having back issues of 009 News with gaps  (i.e. if permission is denied then it does not get published).  But in any event it will take time to get all the neccessary permissions to re publish the material, and scanning 6000 odd sheets of A4 paper (each presumably printed on BOTH sides!) will take some time regardless of the technology thrown at it, particularly if you want to be able to carry out a rapid serch of the result by typing in a search term rather than manually looking at every page!

There are several problems to overcome to get any result on a 009 News Back numbers CD, but the prime one for the Society Committee is to find the time, or more correctly someone with the time who is willing to do the job to the standard needed.

The same thing applies to any other Society project, so perhaps my point should be that if there is such a project you would like to see happen then possibly the best thing to do is to volunteer to do it yourself when you contact the Committee!