Old Model Engnieer Magazines on CD/DVD???

[WessexmanParticipant @wessexman]

[WessexmanParticipant @wessexman]

I suppose this thread is mainly aimed at the owners and management of the ME and MEW magazines. Firstly I think you do a fanastic job and create two really balanced magazines, always of great interest to me.

 

My question is quite simple. I am a hoarder and have numerous old copies of the ME especially going back to the 1930’s, they are unbound and hence not in a very storable condition and frankly not of much reference use. Yet I know that I would dearly like to access regularly some of the old articles for reference and research purposes.  I suspect that I am not unique in this dilemma. Furthermore when I see the vast amount of shelf space a good or complete run of the ME would take and the cost of binding makes the idea impossible for me to consider both on cost and space.

 

I think it would be really great if you could start copying the old issues in a searchable format on DVD or CD. This would be I am sure a good income opportunity for you. I know several organisations such as the Morgan Three Wheeler Club who have done so very successfully for their older journals.

 

It would also be a welcome Xmas present to many a model engineer for sure. Just a thought. Keep up the great work.

 

[NilochParticipant @niloch]

Couldn’t agree more Wessexman.  This suggestion was mooted in the early days of this forum here

[Flying FiferParticipant @flyingfifer]

Hi wessexman,

As one hoarder to another I couldnt agree more. Having lugged boxes & boxes of all sorts of magazines from Aeromodeller, Model Aircraft, Radio Models, RCME, model railway constructor, railway modeller, model boats, model maker & many more titles in all our house moves (due to work ) my dear wife suggested that its time I had a clearout.

After a prolonged recovery    

    I found myself agreeing with her.

So I started to scan MEW. Then I thought hang on, why not scan only the articles that I want to keep from ME to begin with, that way I could sell the magazines & start to clear some shelf space as ME takes up more room than MEW. So I did & I`m now about to sell about 8 feet of ME`s.

The hard drive backup & DVD duplicates take up a miniscule amount of space compared to the hard copy mags. Now all I need do is print off the pages I want & it doesn`t matter a hoot if they get covered with coolant or not as is easy to print another copy.

By the way my wife didn`t really lug them around the country it was a lorry that did the move !

 

[ken heppenerParticipant @kenheppener64998]

Hi All….I too would be willing to purchase old ME’s on CD or DVD…..I think it’s a great idea….Can anything be done in this direction….?

[Peter TuckerParticipant @petertucker86088]

I would like to purchase early MEWs on disk.  So what’s the chances Powers That Be?

 

Peter.

[CirclipParticipant @circlip]

The emergence of DVD’s has made bulk storage a much more viable proposition (Remember 3 1/2″ floppies??) so the only way to “Store” them is to get enough like minded people to “Do it themselves” ONLY for each others benefit and NOT for monetary gain.

 

 A private individual group has been offered to the management to take on the task for one of the magazines mentioned as it IS a time consuming job, but if shared out, — Many hands etc.

 

   Regards  Ian.

[WessexmanParticipant @wessexman]

Thanks for all the respondants to my original posting.

 

I dont know about intellectual property / copyright questions and trust that someone may shed some light on this issue. 

 

However what is abundantly clear is that there is enthusiasm for the opportunity to buy on DVD previously published magazines. Hence there is a real potential for our distinguished Editor to take the lead and advise us what is possible / likely / acceptable.

 

I think the input from “Circlip” is particularly interesting as to the prospect of doing it ourselves – 100 inputs a year a piece and most of the job is done. But the issue of copyright clearly needs to be addressed – hence over to you please David.

 

Best regards

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi There

I am sure it will happen but management is reluctant at the moment due to the fact that all and sudry can copy them and sell them.

Slowly is the key word.

I agreed to put a lot of srticles on the web and that is happening.

I do want to add all of MEW as pdfs but it might be better on CD.

regards David

 

[WessexmanParticipant @wessexman]

Hi
David,>
>

Thank you very much for
your response.>>

I think that the
situation is clear and there is a real business and profit opportunity for the
owners of your excellent titles. How much is it worth. Well purely from a
personal perspective I think I would be prepared to pay say £150 for a
hundred years of he ME and I suspect others would
also.>
>

I understand that you
are putting more articles on the web and that is admirable and as a subscriber
to both of your mags I use this facility for
reference.>>

However in the case of
the very old editions which must be out of copyright I assume and to have these
in a truly searchable format on a DVD would be very interesting for many model
engineers. >>

I collect old model
engineering machine tools and if I wanted to search in the period 1898 to 1920
for example on all articles in relation to my ancient Holtzapfel lathe, then
accessing a DVD I could do so without fuss.   >
>

I just think that if I
were a shareholder in the owners of your titles I would want to maximise the
value of the business.>
>

If you look on ebay it
is absolutely amazing how many offerings of for example Debretts peerage of say
1938 in electronic format are available. I assume without contravening any
copyright laws. Probably these have been produced privately with no
income to the current owners of the title.>>

I suppose inevitably it
will happen one day, but it would be great if your owners took the lead.
>>

Best
regards>> >>

[cParticipant @c]

Wessexman may care to look at the Model Engineer Index for references to his ancient Holtzapfel lathe; there are some twenty six records responding to a search for “Holtzapffel” in the time period he specifies.

 

The index is available as downloadable .csv files at http://www.groundlevel.demon.co.uk/me_index.html or searchable online at http://www.itech.net.au/modelengineer/index.asp

[Flying FiferParticipant @flyingfifer]

David,

As regards on a CD, i don`t think so as my own experience tells me that the first 14 issues of MEW including the “re-arranged” fold out plans means that there are about 88 pages per issue & all of them take up 2.4Gb on a 4.7Gb DVD.

 By re-arranged I mean that each “fold” of the plan was cut & pasted onto & A4 sheet except on 2 occassions where I had to put  the parts onto an A3 sheet otherise the plan would look peculiar.

Each issue took about 4 hours each to scan, cleanup & store so it is not a short job but as someone has said many hands etc.

I assisted colin Usher on his index for Aeromodeller & 4 or 5 years didnt take that long to do.

 

Regards Alan

[WessexmanParticipant @wessexman]

Hi xtoph,

 

Many thanks for your reply. This exactly confirms what I am suggesting. some dedicated individuals have spent a lot of time compiling the references for ME. now if we had the DVD’s to match the references then Bobs your Uncle – out pops the article / reference. Of course with modern searchable software this can be incorported into the DVD format, thus giving an added dimension.

 

The alternative is to find someone who has the relevent hard copy who would allow you access to it.

 

Best regards  Keith 

[cParticipant @c]

Let me have an email address Keith, and tell me what you’re looking for and I’ll see what I can do.

 

Regards – Chris

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi There

Even if we do the first MEWs as PDFs they wont be searchable.

They will be created from the magazines themselves.

 

The newest ones are created from the layout files and should be searchable I think.

regards David

 

[CirclipParticipant @circlip]

So, about 25 issues per 4.7 Googly bites, even WITHOUT indexes, indesneeze – a contents listing, 6 DVD’s take a lot less space than 1350mm (4ft 6ins.)  of heavy paper.

 

  John Stevenson recently got rid of virtually a complete set of M/E’s and you could see the shelf groaning under the weight of the “Terrace of back to backs”

 

  I suppose that if the mags WERE put on DVD’s by the management, this would stuff up the “Carrot” of freeview by “Subscribers only”???

 

  Regards  Ian.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

I’v got the facsimille reprint of vol 1 1898,its a book 190 x250 x20mm,hard covered,now 110 of those(and the newer ones bigger)is going to take up a lot of room,be much better on disc,my book cost nz$25 about 15yrs ago,second hand,hate to say how much it would be new,prob nz$60+,got to have the adds,its amazing the things you can’t get now that you could100yrs ago!IAN SC.

[Lawrence MurrayParticipant @lawrencemurray28383]

Here in USA, I was at the GEARS show in Portland OR last month. There was a table from VIllage Press which publish US Magazines LIVE STEAM, PROJECTS IN METAL, and HOME SHOP MACHINIST. I asked when they were going to put their back issues of CD or DVD. What I was told was that before they could sell a disc with the magazine articles in it they’d have to contact each author and get an agreement to reuse the article as they only bought publication rights once.

Hopefully it is different in England.

FWIW, I have a bunch of the RAMEC (Reprtint All Model Engineer Committee)volumes that came out back in the 70s, sure be nice to have them on a CD so I could put them on my little netbook pc.

Larry Murray

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi There

England is no different.

Copyright is 70 or 75 years after an authors death.

I am overcoming it with permission from authors and also reprinting articles where the writer was employed by the company.

regards David

 

[WessexmanParticipant @wessexman]

Thank you all for the responses.

 

David I think it is clear that there is indeed some serious interest in the DVD approach to the ME & MEW archives. 

 

I dont undertstand the issue you raised on the searchability of the images from the original magazines. In the case of the Morgan Three Wheeler club archives on disc all are produced from original magazines going way back. Furthermore all are searchable.

 

I think it should be possible to take scans and make produce them in a searchable format.

 

Not being a computer techy just a thick iron founder I may of course be wrong.

 

Best regards

 

Keith

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

The situation on copyright is clear in one case.

If the magazine is scanned and saved IN IT’S ENTIRETY, covers, adverts etc and no changes made then it is permissible national Geographic got taken to  court and won, this sets a president .

 

However taking articles from the magazine requires the author’s permission [ or their heirs ] unless as David has said they were contracted to the magazine.

 

As regards searchability [ is that a word ? ] if you scan the pages as images and them turn these into a PDF it’s only a PDF of images and not searchable as each word is only part of a picture.

 

However if you take the pictures of the article and run them thru some OCR software [ Optical Character Recognition ] then it can turn the picture of test back into words.

 

Drawback to this is that it can be an extended process, one mag, only OCR’ing the articles [ leave the adverts as pics ] could take up to 2 full days to do.

 

Not only do you have to get the software to check the picture and turn it into text but you have to spell check it and check for layout. Fractions are a right bastard and the OCR can come up with anything on these so there is no fractions in most fonts.

 

Can it be done, yes, can it be done quickly and easily ?, no

 

I can understand MEW being done but ME going back to 189 plonk on paper of very dubious quality would be a total nightmare.

 

So who volunteering ?

 

John S.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Just a question,does anyone know how many volumes were done of the facsimile editions that were published by Argus Books in 1976 and reprinted in 77.If you can access vol 1,go to page 119 Tool-Holders for Lathe Work,fig 2 (it use worn round file for tool)a tangental tool and holder,it uses a cotter to wedge the tool in place,other than that its the same as the one being advertised now,nothings new!!IAN S C

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi There

I think I have volume eleven somewhere.

 

It looks like we may be putting MEW from issue 1 onto the website.

Will be subscription based for a seperate fee.

regards David

 

[chris stephensParticipant @chrisstephens63393]

Hi Ian SC,

If all goes to plan, you should be able to see a copy of a Tangential tool holder that pre-dates Model Engineer mag by at least 13 years on the SMEE stand at Sandown.

chris stephens

[Author]

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