Kalmbach has announced the inevitable, and is taking pre-orders:

http://www.kalmbachstore.com/15100.html

Seventy years' worth of Trains Magazine on searchable DVD.

Prepare your gift shops for massive donations of back issues.

Already, we have been advised for the past couple years by one rail auction house not to bother bringing in issues of Trains or Model Railroader newer than, say, 1970 or so. I would prepare your folks to redirect these donations to better, more innovative possible homes--retirement/senior centers, Boy Scouts, "free to children" boxes, etc.

Holy Printing Press Batman! I didn't ever think they'd do that...

Well, as I discovered when I gave away my model railroad magazines, they were already considered literally worthless. In fact, the fellow I gave them to needed a way to haul them off, so I had to buy $50 worth of plastic bins for him to haul them off in!

I was pretty certain my railroad magazines were also not worth much, but since I occasionally refer to them, I'd been keeping them. Guess it's time to clear 'em out. Too bad I can't even dump them on ebay for a few bucks...

For the past couple of years, I buy about 15-20 older issues of Trains at a time from a museum I visit. These are mostly from the 60s and 70s, and cost $1.00 a piece. I used them as disposable reading material. I found the old articles interesting, and didn't really care if the cover fell off. They came in handy for business travel etc.

Once, I had dreamed of amassing an entire run of Trains Magazine. Looks like I can do it now for a lot less, using less shelf space, and without the musty smell of old magazines. Huzzah!

Hey, I'll sell you mine. Even includes "Vol. 1, #0". <:-)

I do enjoy reading the old magazines and seeing the classified ads- cabooses and passenger cars a plenty... That being said, my recycle bin is about to get a workout, and my marriage a positive boost, as I release a whole lot of shelf space to more mutual uses!

Absolute fab, space is at a serious premium here, with a layout construction underway. Now to do the same thing with model railroader, the only issue there is scale drawings, and those can be printable same page size if possible.

My collection is almost complete and I love grabbing a handful at random to read / reread. Some of my 1950's issues are in the form of bound volumes and those are simply less convenient so I'm not sure how I'd feel about viewing via electronic form. Sure, if there's something I need to see but not for general entertainment.

BTW if anyone needs Vol. 11 (Nov. 1950 - Oct. 1951) let me know as I stupidly bought this bound volume twice. I'm beyond being able to remember what I have or don't have. Bunch of individual dupes as well.

Steve

Ah, but fellows, you miss the obvious: the DVD will only be good for as long as you have a machine with a compatible operating system. Ten years from now you may not be able to access that material on the disk, but you will be able to thumb through those paper issues at your leisure! -- Ray

A friend of mind made the same comment. The same thing happens with music, as each new format is introduced, the stuff gets rereleased. I'm sure Kalmbach wouldn't miss the chance to "double-dip" and release stuff in a new format. Or you can just make sure to keep some of that old technology close by, which is something weseem to be doing already....

Ten years from now, we'll be able to buy either "80 Years of Trains" on a USB thumb drive for five dollars, or we can buy copied versions of the 70-years DVDs at train shows for $2. And that'll just be the more convenient form of the Google Books or NRHS or R&LHS complete database of same online.

You think I'm kidding? I had some photos scanned in 1995 or so when the 1MB files took up most of a 3.5" floppy. I just recently gained permanent custody of the originals, scanned them at 10X the resolution, did restoration work in Photoshop, and put them all on a USB drive I could afford to give away to the researcher as it cost less than the 20+ floppies did in 1995

Ah, but fellows, you miss the obvious: the DVD will only be good for as long as you have a machine with a compatible operating system.

The O/S will likely be the least of likely impediment to continued access. File Formats like PNG, JPEG, GIF and pdf are mature and so ubiquitous that they are readable by any O/S, whether its Windows, Apple or or open source like Linux.

I have installed an old copy of Lotus Improv (the old dynamic spreadsheet, not the modern open office rip) on a Vista Machine just to see if it could be done. The impediment was that it was on 3.5" floppies and FDD's aren't on any modern laptop. However, an external USB floppy and away we go. How long they'll make external FDD's is anybody's guess. I tried copying it to a CD, but it wouldn't run.

As for flash drives, they do not make good long term storage. I had some older pictures split and discolor.

Soon, Blue-Ray drives will be standard (already on some) on most machines. As a Blue Ray platter holds 25GB, that's about 5 DVD's. Expect that to be the next long term storage media.

I have heard professional archivists say that the best permanent retention method is the good old paper copy. There is no need to be concerned about compatable storage or operational software systems.

Since we seem to fixate upon "the exceptions that prove the rule" in debates like this....

Since everyone is eager to show off the 5.25" floppies that are now "useless" and the external hard drives that went bad, how about you come over and deal with this boxload of vintage PRR timetables that got wet, became one solid block, and then got mildewed? Or this binder of papers from the founding of a railroad where half the pages are pretty much illegible because the ink faded? Or these sepia-tone "black and white" 1900 photos that don't have enough contrast left in them to be usable because of a bad batch of fixer? Or this other batch of carefully compiled scrapbooks that's basically all confetti today because of the acid in the paper?

Or, more importantly, that brilliant archive of photos of a line, or the complete set of documents and newspaper clippings about same, we know exists somewhere, but no one's seen it since the guy died? Or since that fateful estate auction, where who knows which box it ended up in?

People get hung up on the media used to preserve an archive. That's never as important as the effort made to take the photographs and compile the information or data, combined with the care taken to preserve and make accessible the information therein.

Thirteen photographic companies were retained by the Federal government to document the Civil War for the United States. You've only heard about Matthew Brady. He and his company did the archive work that made it usable in the future. The others didn't.

Just last week, I worked with a historical society to salvage potentially priceless manuscripts, documents, and compilations by a long-deceased local historian at his daughter's estate auction. I was the only one left who knew what the guy's notebooks and binders looked like, as I had some of the originals and the stuff donated to the society 40 years ago had been processed already. I found what we believe to be all the "missing links" in his archives, kept in 70-year-old loose-leaf binders that were falling apart as we picked them up. Had I been a couple hours late, they might well be in some trash can.

The other downfall for paper collections is that the information only exists in one location. A digital collection can exist in the archives, in your computer, in my external hard drive, across the planet in a Carbonite server, wherever. If my basement floods and my paper collection is destroyed, well its GONE! But if my basement floods and my hard drive is toast I can always get that info. back by getting a copy off of one of the numerous other copies out there.

Thumb drives are already exceeding DVD capacity.Crazy. Blu-rays can read older formats. Its a smaller wavelength of light which is why it can pack more data in.
Seacrchable database, can you imagine if you could text search it? wow.

Props for Kalmbach to do this that is a HUGE project.