Robert and everyone....

SRHA, through a major effort by one of our members has accumulated and scanned a large number of employee and public timetables. I do not know how many of each have been scanned as of today but the files are measured in GB. Several people have provided ETTs and PTTs from their private collections including some that are very old and rare. (If anyone has any ETTs or PTTs they would like to see included in the project, contact me off  list.)

So...my question to everyone is: How should SRHA make them available and at what price?

For a few example questions:
Should they be freely available?......(If so, why)
Should they be available only to SRHA members?.....(If not, why should non-members be able to acquire them?) (If they are sold, should there be member and non-member pricing?
Should they be offered individually, by Division, by year or as a complete set?
Should older/rarer examples be priced differently?
Should the material be available only to people that go to the archives to do research?

While the question is only about ETTs, SRHA has to answer the same questions about virtually all of the items in the archives. Note that SRHA dues are used mainly to pay for TIES, NO dues money is used by the archives.
The archives (building, rental trucks, buying computers, etc.) are paid for by GRAB (company store) sales and private donations. SRHA has never charged model manufacturers to use drawings and data to produce Southern decals, locos or rolling stock. (Virtually every accurate product from any of those categories produced over the past twenty+ years has used SRHA archives materials.)

I realize these are hard questions to ask and answer but we need to put policies in place that let SRHA fulfill its mission and charter and still have funds to maintain the collection.

Ike

PS As info...the total cost of acquired collections exceeds $100,000, Spacesaver shelving in the archives $20,000+, all paid for mostly by donations.
PPS Note my earlier post about the 1948 Pullman study that is available from the (access is temporary as it is still being developed) file server at the archives. There is now a file of 175+ Pullman-Southern correspondence items on the same link. We ask that the material not be used for commercial purposes without contacting SRHA and credit be given to SRHA for use.