Last March there were a couple of threads about publishing back issues of MR on CD-ROMs. The gist of those discussions is that there was some appettite for the product but that MR doubts that it could be done profitably.
I have a new idea. What about making all of the out of publication Kalmbach books available on CD-ROM? Books such as Bill McClannahan’s treatise on scenery, or building structures and bridges? The older publications would not compete with the Kalmbach books currently in production.
While one the surface this may appear as a good concept, one would have to pursue such a project with a great deal of caution and perhaps significant re-writing. Many articles/books written even in the recent past contain references to employing materials/details/items no longer available on the commercial market. Likewise many of the older techniques in modeling have been superceeded by much more effective methods which achieve far better results. As a person who has long built models based on really old MR magazine articles, because of experience I have no difficultly translating concepts or substituting materials as necessary but for newcomers it could prove to be a daunting task. Some concepts are forever, others fare badly with time.
You raise some very good points, however it sweems to me that Kalmbach couold add a disclaimer or some other sort of exculpatory language. However, there is a lot of good info contained in many of those books that is still relevent. The John Olsen book on the Jerome & Southwestern is a good example.
Personally, I’d like to see a re-issue of all the EL moore articles with perhaps a chapter on how they could be built using today’s techniques.
I don’t see this as a huge problem, especially if there was some sort of explanatory note provided. Libraries don’t seem to worry about someone checking out an out-of-date book (I know, not a truly parallel situation.)