archiving publications digitally

[topcat61]

How much if our Hobby History is available on either microfilm or in a digital format?

I was thinking weather or not it would be feasible if there was something like newspapers.com for hobby publications for researchers and collectors?

[samosa4u]

I would like to know this as well.
It would be awesome if you could visit a website and browse through thousands of old issues of SCD, Baseball Cards Magazine, Old Cardboard, etc. It would really help me with my research.

[steve B]

The catch is that most of it is still under copyright. (Maybe all? I don't know of any pre 1923 hobby publications)

I'm not sure how newspapers .com does things, but they probably had permission from the newspapers in return for some small amount from the paywall fees.

This would be a good project for an collectors organization. The national stamp group I'm in has gotten the rights to many classic books that have very little commercial value, but are the best references despite being in some cases more than 50 years old. Most of those are online free to members, and in some cases for everyone. (Being a member I'm not sure exactly which are which.)

If someone could get the rights, and a good run of physical copies it wouldn't be hard. Scans are just time consuming.

[samosa4u]

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...uptcy-auction/

Sports Collectors Digest was one of a group of 50 magazines sold in a bankruptcy auction last month. Publisher F+W Media filed for Chapter 11 earlier this year and the company’s assets, including magazine titles from various hobby and collectible realms, went on the block.

The buyer for SCD and five other collectible-oriented publications was Cruz Bay Publishing, a division of Active Interest Media based in Boulder, CO. The cost for all of them according to FolioMag.com was a modest $350,000. Cruz Bay won 14 publications in all including Popular Woodworking for $1 million and Writer’s Digest for $200,000.

So it looks like we'd have to get permission from Active Interest Media.

[steve B]

I bet if you offer to do all the scanning work and allow them to paywall it, they might just let it happen.

While I really dislike paywalls on newspapers - like really, what commercial value is there in most newspapers older than a few days?
I do have the stamp membership, which is something like 15 or 20 dollars a year. Their magazine is quarterly and it's really worth the subscription fee.

[topcat61]

So I pay for newspapers.com, and I have no problem with that since the money I give them goes to upkeep of the site and finding and digitizing new papers.

I don't think I'd have an issue with paying for hobby information as well. We could always ask, and some journals from the 40's through the 70's such as Burdick's Card Collectors Bulletin and American Card Catalog probably didn't get their copyrights renewed if they had them at all -they might actually be in the public domain?

I think the more you as a collector can learn, the better off you'll be. I don't mince words when I say that I got a real crappy education, but card collecting and net54 has really helped reverse that. I thought maybe this idea would help other collectors too particularly since there are swaths of missing hobby history. Guys like Lionel Carter is one of the biggest reasons why I'm a writer today.