Don,
Have you been to the Joe O'Brien museum in PEI? There are some really great treasures there.
Dave,
I rarely go out of the house (I may melt).
Some years ago the daughter of the folks that run the PEI museum contacted me.
I offered to create a section of my then websites for the museum and it was active for about seven years. Despite all the links, the pages never drew much traffic, and thus I never expanded the pages as I originally intended.
Upon the reactivation of this website in early Feb-2012, I omitted much material from the two former websites. The O'Brien PEI pages were one of those omissions.
FWIW, I've never been to the museum in Goshen either. Perhaps I'll get there some day, perhaps I won't.
Hell! just last April was my first visit to the USTA (and the last time I was in Columbus previous to 2011 was 1973).
I'd like to visit the Floral Barn at Lexington and that may materialize some day. There is a large quantity of publications and memorabilia there that is not on display and uncatalogued.
The real issue is that all these visits would be out-of-pocket and without any possibility of even bare expenses.
I've turned down uncompensated-work that would take a long period of commitment, despite the projects being of immense historical worthiness.
The real problem with all this historical stuff is that the industry is struggling to survive
today, and history is pretty far down the priority list.
The museum recovers some costs because their a 501k, however I've no such possibility. My two websites, active for eleven years resulted in a handful of donations.
About a year ago, I started some work on 1960s publications and the overwhelming response for more, more, and more free materials was something I was not prepared to deal with. Thus I abandoned the 1960s. If there comes a time that I resume the 1960s perhaps everybody with the FREE-demand will have died by then
Nobody wants to pay.
The websites offer a resource and/or references to gather contacts outside the normal industry channels.
Just recently I had a contact from a relative of George Ford Morris, and in the past there have been numerous others that have used the contact to request information. The result of their contact provides a reciprocal possibility as well.
The family of Sanders Russell some years back has created a continuous communication.
