As someone who seems to spend a fair proportion of their time trecking down
from East Cornwall to the Cornish Studies Library at Redruth I'd welcome
the chance to have a say.
Without doubt M.J is the most important mining history resource we have.
In an ideal world the best solution would be to access M.J, either on line
or on cdrom. However the issue of cost needs to be dealt with. Which ever
way this is approached pennies are going to have to be spent. Given that
the only people who would benefit from this is us, the mining history
community, perhaps it is us who should pay for it. Not being a finacial
whizz kid I don't have immediate answers; perhaps a chartitable trust
funded by you and I supplimented by funding from M.J,the Lottery and
English Heritage?? As a matter of interest how many people would be
willing to put their hands in their pocket if this were a viable option?
If a digital version of M.J is not possible the next best thing might be a
half decent and widely disseminated index. If such a thing were available
it might mean that valuable and limited research time could be more
profitably spent. Perhaps such an undertaking might be within the realms
of the amateur reasearcher.
Whatever; there has to be a better solution than filling the car with
petrol and spending a day getting sidetracked by interesting
irrelevancies.
Rick Stewart.
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