Personally I think going to e-mail/pdf only newsletters is a terrible idea!

Should they be available on the web? You bet! Should you stop the print edition? Definitely not!

Why do I say that? Because if you go to e-mail only, you're putting the burden on your members. It's no longer simply a matter of having it show up in your mailbox, and you can instantly read it without any hassles. Now you have to go to the site, usually log in, download the file, then read it on a screen or print it out, etc etc.

The newsletter is a promotional tool. It tells your members what's going on, and why they should get involved. Sure, you can save some postage and ink costs, but if you lose one member because of it, or somebody doesn't come to the work party because they couldn't be bothered to download the file and then wait while Adobe Reader does its daily update cycle, then what have you really gained?

Don't be penny wise and pound foolish here folks. Spread the word in as many ways as you can, and make it as easy and convenient as possible!

several people here have mentioned Archives and Libraries. I would like to mention what the the Pacific Locomotive Association, operators of the Niles Canyon Railway, which is the local steam museum in the san francisco Bay Area has done with their newsletter.

They have put all their back issues onto a set of CD-Roms and they sell them in their museum book store.

I am going to buy a set for the Western Railway Museum Archives when I get a chance to get over to Niles. It will fill out the early issues that we are missing and are very unlikely to find for the run in the F.M. Smith Library.

Have any of you heard of any other preservation groups making digital copies of their newsletters?

Ted Miles

As an environmentalist I say "Use recycled paper".

No. Unless it's truly a throwaway "news of the day" type communication among members, anything newsletter-like should be on paper -- at least nominally.

Anything you want the recipients to value, cherish, archive, should be on paper.

I think most people are FAR more likely to read an interesting paper thing than an e-lump in their e-box when they're busy. Look at your own life: Do you get TRAINS NewsWire by email? Do you read it nearly as diligently as you read TRAINS paper mag?

Anything you want to be passed around, should be on paper. Anything you want someone to stick on their coffee table should be on paper, unless they have a really weird coffee table :)

Paper publications are "public". Privately circulated e-documents are private. By going "e", you reduce the credibility of your newsletter to that of a private internal memo. It can't be cited with the same credibility by academic papers and news outlets. The Bluewater Wikipedia article was finally "blessed" because of references to paper publications.

On paper, you have stronger First Amendment rights, and it settles the question of whether "freedom of speech" or "freedom of the press" applies. Ahem.

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Now here's the asterisk. It should ALSO be archivable online, and the prevailing format for that seems to be .PDF. That is, however you prepare your newsletter, it should also be possible for you to generate a .PDF that looks exactly the same as the finished product. If you author your newsletter on a modern PC or Mac, that should be cake.

Being on paper gives it the credibility to be referenceworthy, but being online also gives it the accessibility to actually be referenced and referred to. Thus your PDFs should have something on them to suggest that they were published on paper; e.g. that panel on the back page with return address and postal imprint where the address label goes.

And one more thing. Your archives department should labor to re-render all your previous newsletters in PDF, going clear back to issue one. At worst, simply scan the pages and package them in a PDF, but better is to render the text words as text words, so search engines can index them (yes they drill into PDFs). Ideal is to go back to the original source photos and art.

And then you can make a museum business decision about making those available on the web site. I think in the future you are more likely to, if not now.

You can also decide whether to offer to email the PDF version to members in addition to the paper newsletter. You can give those reciving it in e-form the option to not receive a paper one. Don't make them choose one or the other.

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Now, on the question of "e-newsletter for reduced membership fee" ... think that through. Museum membership is not a magazine subscription, and even if it was, how many people would go in for "Send me TRAINS magazine e-format only for 25% less"? Nobody. Would you donate $5 less to Public Television if they promised to send you the newsletter "e" instead of on paper? No. So members don't care. But they darn well care about getting a newsletter - ask the members of any organization whose editor has "fallen down" in his duties and publishes too infrequently!

The second problem with "E-newsletter for reduced membership fee" is it establishes a cash value for the benefit of the paper newsletter. This has tax consequences. A brief rewind to tax law 101. When you join PBS for $50 and get a tote bag valued at $20, IRS says you can only deduct $30, because you got $20 of stuff for your $50. However, IRS has historically regarded member newsletters as a nominal, inconsequential value. That simplifies people's taxes. Don't blow that.

As a relevant reply, four years ago my employer discontinued a monthly slick paper magazine in favor of a weekly e-newsletter. The cost savings were huge. Now our central archivist is trying to figure out how we preserve the historical digital record for the e-newsletter, and then how to provide access to that record for future research.

Wesley

These are excellent and well thought out discussion points. Thank you for them.

Right now we both send the newsletter out and have it available to the members on the web pages - in both HTML and PDF formats.

I can see the value of continuing both, and, I appreciate your thoughts on the subject as well.

Thank you.

Why were the savings huge? I think we may be mixing apples and oranges here.

Did the savings only come from the cost of printing and mailing, or did the change in production values "monthly slick paper" vs "weekly e-newsletter" also contribute a lot to the savings?

I took the question to only be related to the costs of printing and mailing a hard copy paper edition. Changing production values could also result in a savings, but that's a different discussion.

On reflection, the cost savings are irrelevant to the case at hand. What is of interest in the case of my employer is the matter of archiving a digital newsletter for future reference. Issues of the print publication were made into bound volumes on a regular basis. There is no solution yet for the e-newsletter.

Wesley

They are indeed apples and oranges. A blog is not a slick color magazine and high production values in one don't map to the other. I would say it would be much cheaper to make a slick blog. WIRED Magazine puts the same words on blog-like pages and also the print magazine; go take a look.

Print tends to have a different style - editors knowing they're going "e" tend to be a lot more informal, and of course that's cheaper.

Hi:

Our Museum has two publications; a quarterly 24-page history magazine that's printed on coated paper; and, a monthly and bi-monthly newsletter (4-6 pages) that is sent to members both as a full-color PDF or in hard-copy in monochrome.

The quarterly magazine (Twin City Lines) does not contain time-sensitive Museum news while the purpose of the newsletter (Streetcar Currents)(the play on words in the title is intentional) is to disseminate current news and announcements.

We give our members the option of how they would like to get the newsletter and more than half of our 300+/- members chose to get their newsletter by e-mail as a PDF file. The Streetcar Currents is also archived on our website and we have issues that go back to 2003 in the "News" section of our website right now. So even new members can get a flavor of the goings on with our Museum at least that far back if threy are so inclined.

I estimate that we save about .70 cents per copy (printing and postage) when we send the newsletter by e-mail to those members who choose to get it that way. This amounts to at least $105 per mailing for an annual savings of around $850. For a relatively small operation like ours, that's a goodly amount.

Thanks!

Currently the Railroad Museum of New England has two publications - a quarterly, 12 page, well illustrated newsletter with distribution to all members. This publication, "Along the Line," is a record of the activities of the RMNE. E-mail delivery of this is not offered at this time, so it is at the mercy of printing and postage costs.
The RMNE also offers a "The Order Board - the Working Member's Newsletter" to active or premium members, and also to regular members that provide e-mail addresses. The 2-page "Order Board" is published at least on a monthly basis, and more frequently if required. This is available in either print or e-mail format, and at this time only about 25 print copies are distributed, vs. over 200 e-mail deliveries.
E-mailing the "Order Board" has saved the RMNE hundreds of dollars, and we are considering offering an e-mail version of the "Along the Line" to the membership (on request) to save even more. - Bill Sample, editor - RMNE

I am also involved with steamboats as well as steam railroading and anything steam for that matter.a There used to be a large bimonthly book published with membership, after a while with the technology age the editor decided it would be cheaper to go full email, alot of the oldtimers do not have or care to have email in their homes and the magazine slowly met its demise as membership declined. keep it in hardcopy.

What about the needs of those who are visually impaired? If newsletters are available only in pdf format, you are stuck with the font and size the editor chose, and cannot highlight the text to make it more readable.

I think the best idea is to do what the PSRM does: make publications available in both printed and e-mail versions, and put the email version in both html and pdf formats.

Hi:

When the document is in PDF format it may actually help the vision impaired. On my computer you can select the size of the PDF document. In fact We've had older members praise us for sending our newsletter to them as a PDF document because they can then enlarge the document to, say, 130% or larger so they can read the text. I believe that most computers using Adobe Acrobat Reader have this expanded size capability.

Thanks!

WRM does a similar thing to the RMNE.

Personally, I think that they should never be 'emailed only' newsletters. However, in an effort to save costs on postage and the idea of 'going green', we should offer that people can sign up to receive an emailed newsletter as opposed to a hard copy.