I remember that Model Railroader asked its readers if they would be interested in purchasing all of the back issues on CD. What decision was made? It would sure be nice to free up the 5 feet of shelving my collection takes up.
How much would you be willing to pay for that CD?
Scroll down the Discussion List to around the end of March. This topic was discussed by 20 or 30 people.
I don’t think MR/Trains made any decision about availability or possible pricing.
As the previous poster has pointed out, this subject has been addressed quite recently. In fact, it’s come up several times in the past year and has been heavily discussed. Even an approximate price that buyers might be willing to pay (and how many years each CD might cover) has been talked about.
However…MR has indicated that, while they are interested, there do not appear to be immediate plans to issue back volumes of MR on CD.
But I’d like to caution that the usefulness of such CDs could be shortlived. Look at the record. Techonology is advancing so fast today’s CDs may well not even be readable by any machine in use by the end of the decade. For common usage I doubt that the good old printing-on-paper method will be outlived by any of our more modern, ever changing technology when it comes to reference material. It may have taken me some time to accrue and it takes up considerable shelf space, but I’d never trade my library of hardcopy MRs for a similar set of CDs.
John