Does any museum only email newsletters?

If so, how does that work for you?

i want to make two comments on this; first putting the newsletters on paper helps to write the history of a given rail museum, historical society etc. They are often the only first hand, contempory report on events of the oranization.

Second, I take car of the magazines and newsletters at the Western railway Museum and we collect them from every electric museum in the country. Without them everybody who is interested in the preservation of electric cars would be left out in the cold!

Save the e-mail for events and announcements that are time sensitive. Or use them for your crew calling.

Ted Miles

I work at a science museum as well as being involved in railway preservation and what happened when it tried to go "paperless" with its pay system might be worth thinking about. After trumpeting the advantages of the new system which would allow us to print out our own pay stubs instead of sending them to us in hard copy a lot of the housekeeping staff were found not to have a home computer. Looking into this and making all kinds of akward suggestions at to how they could still get their stups was ineffective and the entire change was shelved. There are more people than you realize who are not "wired" and can't or won't be able to see your newsletter if it isn't available in printed form. And having worked in a rail museum library I can tell you that it won't be able to print out all these to save them for future reference. Amazingly useful information was found in some of these newsletters that were on the shelves, but if they don't come in the mail their collection will cease. Large firms like UP which have stopped printing magazines can archive their web versions, but can your museum?

Recently our NRHS chapter has switched to electronic distribution for all "exhange" newsletters (any which are provided as a courtesy or information exchange with other organizations). All regular dues paying members still receive a paper copy in the mail.

What is your newsletter for?

Distribution of time sensitive information just to active members, maybe appropriate.

Distribution of not time sensitive information to a wider audience, or for archival purposes, probably not a good idea.

You ask some very interesting questions, Jim, but the parameters are so broad any yes or no answer is meaningless in such wide context.

dave

Niles Canyon Rwy (PLA) has a significant percentage of members who do not have e-mail or internet access. Curently all members get printed newletters, I believe. NCRy has a very effective members' e-discusion board. The "Club Car" newsletter posted to the e-discussion board as soon as it's ready to print. However the newsletters are not available to the general public on the website. In retrospect this feature should be added, to show internet folks amazing progress at NCRy.

Golden Gate RR Museum also has a significant percentage of members who do not have e-mail or internet access. All members get printed newsletters, plus the newsletters are posted to the website.

I suspect that a well-written printed newsletter is more likely to be read than the electronic version, at least for many folks.

- Doug Debs

It's a matter of choosing the appropriate medium. Even though I have a computer and a printer, there's a certain "brightening of the day" when a museum publication shows up in the mail. And although the percentage of people without home internet connections is slowly decreasing, there are plenty of folks who haven't ventured into cyberspace, and considering that the railway preservation and railway enthusiast demographic "skews old" (as the marketing experts say), it's best to stay with "hard copy" for the foreseeable future. This discussion came up at a meeting of one of the Southern California railfan groups, and it turned out that a surprising number of the members managed to live quite well without a computer in the home. Just because we who read this discussion are more or less "computer savvy" doesn't mean that everyone is.

If your newsletter is also distributed to libraries, it would be useful to check with them to see if they prefer electronic distribution (or maybe an annual CD with the newsletters as PDF's.

I know some of WRM's newsletters are on file at the Bancroft Library at U.C. Berkeley, but their holdings seem to stop in the early 1990's (I just checked the catalog). Of course, the director of Bancroft does know that WRM's library and archives exist so maybe they don't still have to receive the newsletter.

Dave - our newsletter goes mainly to our dues paying members, active or not.

I think the hard copy newsletter also gives your members something tangible in exchange for their dues. We all get emails every day for free, so paying $30 a year for a few more emails kind of feels like a ripoff!

I would prefer the option of receiving emailed copies of the newsletters for a reduced membership rate. Some of us don't mind having PDFs instead of hard copies of the newsletters and offering the option can be seen as the "Green" thing to do.

Newsletters serve several purposes, depending on who's writing them and for whom:

*Updates for members/staff/crews/donors/etc.
*Public Relations tool
*Archives of meetings minutes, activities, etc.
*Archives of other news/articles/stories published within
*Publicity for future events, fundraising, etc.

If considering electronic publication of your newsletter, one has to discern all the ultimate uses of the newsletter. I guarantee you that if you go all electronic, someday someone will be killing themselves looking for information contained in a newsletter that no one bothered to print out, let alone archive properly.

To that end, if your newsletter is partially archival in nature, it behooves you to seek out and confirm that other parallel organizations are archiving your publications. If a fire were to befall the archives of the National Capital Trolley Museum or Rockhill Trolley Museum, for example, more-or-less complete sets of newsletters reside in the Maryland Rail Heritage Library, where the Baltimore Streetcar Museum stores its newsletter archives.

On the other hand, however, we are all seemingly disgusting "pack rats" in this hobby. When I was editing the Central Pa. Chapter NRHS newsletter (The Susquehannock), I occasionally went through all the exchanged newsletters looking for the most trivial information I could find just for laughs; I recall the winner being a mention that new pavement parking lines were being painted in an Amtrak station parking lot in Missouri..........

My thought? Same as the Baltimore NRHS approach for the moment: Offer the option as a voluntary speed-versus-hard-copy approach. As long as we have an editor willing, that seems to be the compromise--we make more work, but save postage.

Southern California Chapter, R&LHS offers both e-mail and mailed versions of the newsletter. Members dues are increased for mailed versions. Advantage of e-mail version is speed of distribution and photos that are in color. Mailed version strictly in black and white. PDF's that are e-mailed allow members to print out color version of newsletter. The distribution is about 50-50 between e-mail and snail mail.

Printed newsletters and publications are much more likely to survive than electronic versions. Over the years I have seen a number of groups suffer data losses for a variety of reasons. You might consider offering PDF versions of back issues.

Several groups in my area have discussed keeping archives of their activities on their websites. One of the reasons for this was to provide other groups with an internet searchable way to identify programs and clinics that people have available, since none of the national historical groups maintains such a database. I think this is an excellent idea. One group that I have seen do a good job of this is the Amherst Railway Society with their archives pages.

PC

I would offer the e-version to those who want it. They will get it first. Keep the savings for the museum. However, if you are using bulk rate, any drop in membership numbers for the mailing might actually cost you money if you have to then switch to first class mail. This can be a juggling act depending on how many copies you mail out. You have to balance printing costs, mailing costs (bulk rate vs first class), speed of delivery, by-law requirements (i.e. do you use the newsletter for informing members of upcoming votes), etc. I suspect there will not be one easy solution that fits every museum.

To expand on a thought that was touched upon in an earlier post, those people without a home computer often depend on their workplace computer. Many employers have rules limiting how much personal e-mail can be received/sent from their systems, so unlimited e-mail is not universally accessible to many people. -- Ray