OK I've now confirmed I have the right Jeff Scherb and his comment was "If Kalmbach releases their rights to the index I might be able to assist"

One possibility that may be worth thinking about to get the index back quickly is to set the original program up on an isolated server which could even be in someone's house at the end of an ADSL line. Security considerations that prevent it running on a modern e-commerce server would not be a problem there.

Good going!

Things are definitely looking up for this effort.

Not sure that I can help.   But I have worked a good bit in Access and other programming lanuages e.g. Assembler, Visual Basic, and others.   Have some experience in importing and exporting data in different formats.   At the very least as a user of the Database, I would be useful in any Beta testing and would also be willing to provide input etc in the process of devolping a new database.

Jay Beckham

that Kalmbach has "sold" or otherwised transfer ownership of the original index to the NMRA?  I just received a rather curt response to an update I was giving on one of the yahoo discussion groups about the positive direction this effort to reinstate the index, and I was told it has been anounced that the NMRA has ownership of the list now. Can you confirm this please? Thanks

Ken L.

While I can't claim to have programmed in machine language, I do understand BASIC and have written VBA code in the past.

Regardless, you can count on my support for the project and I am willing to tackle anything that will help the project along.

Very encouraging news!

If the index can be extracted, maybe the best way to preserve it is to build a wiki site with a mysql database under it. That way it is web compatable and safe and everyone is used to the format, kind if like, well this site.

Just thinking.

Bill

If this is going to be an open source effort, I would be willing to help. For my own private use I'd designed a article database. The database used is MySQL, programming was done in Perl.

The data model I used would probably not be sufficient for all the features to original index has. Things to improve would be:

- the trackplan search based on size. Size info is not stored in my design.

- multiple keyword for an article. Currently I only us two keywords. One is for the type of article (construction, layout story, etc.), the other a basic specification of the content (boxcar, scenery, ...).

I have some additional functionality though. My data model keeps the author separate from the keywords. So other than in the original index you could search for part of the author's name as well. Also I do have  basic support for series of articles. This makes it easy to find all articles split over several issues of a magazine

Anyway, the basic functionality would be there, some rough code is available as well. If we get access to the data, it should be possible to adapt and extend this code where necessary.

So I would donate what I have and help get a project going. Due to lack of free time I wouldn't be able to take over a bigger part of the project.

Regards

Martin

 I made an offer in the locked thread on the MRR forums to assist. I've been programming since I was 11 and the TRS-80 Model 1 came out, so I think I have enough experience to look at the old stuff. Someone HAD to have originally typed in all the keywords and stuff, and regardless of how it is stored, there clearly is a mechanism for convertring a keyword typed into the search box into whatever format is required to look it up in the internal 'database' as well as a method of converting the internal storage to human readable to present the results to the user. I don't think it would be a piece of cake to convert, but it's far from impossible. Step one is to get the existing data out, along with whatever relations there are between keywords and articles. Step 2 would be put it in some form that could be used in a modern web-based application - I really have a strong dislike for using XML files as 'databases' and personally would prefer to see it in something like MySQL but whatever floats everyone's boat. STep 3 is the new web front end so people could search what's there. Step 4 would be add more data so the whole thing is more complete - THAT will be the big piece, although with enough volunteers it might not be too painful. I know years ago I tried to build my own application to index my rather extensive collection and eventually gave up on typing in all the article names and keywords. And at the time I had about half as many magazines as I do now.

 I believe the index already has more than just MR magazine in it. The more we get in, the more useful it becomes.

 I do find it a real shame Kalmbach is stuck int he past. They offer nothign but excuses when someone mentions offering electronic forms of back issues. The strangest one has to dow ith the ads. Do they think people are too dumb to realize that the advertiser in the 1947 issue is long gone and you can't order from them? In the meantime, Popular Science magazine has digitized and made available every issue back to the 1870's! For free. With a proper index, there's no real reason to OCR the scans.

                                              --Randy

It seems like there is a lot of interest, from some very "technical" people, who would all like to see the MRR index saved, revised and updated, with far more search functionality than it had.  Great news I say!  Perhaps everyone needs to send an identical, well written, very polite message to N.B. at Kalmach, respectfully asking him to give control of the index to the NMRA?

It can't hurt to lobby for the cause as long as we are nice about it, can it?

The old advertisements are one of the best ways to research old models that are extremely rare or very hard to find - they at least provide a begining step!

I am apalled at how the current MR administration views it's own posterity.  Don't they get it that the hobby is not what is is now, but a sum of everything that has been that will lead to everythign that will be?  Are the writers over there struggling so hard to be original and number one in their respective charis that they want us to simply not look at the past?  Have they considered that a single black and white photograph from 1941, no matter how grainy it may be, is sometimes the greatest key to unlocking a modeling project??

Even if we don't get access to the MR data, I think the powers that be through the NMRA should press forward with creating a Model Railroading index themselves similar to how the science journals have created indexs of their content.  It's covered under the Fair Use to create such indexes; idexes themselves like phonebooks fall under a different set of copyright laws.  Just saying.

Every article has the important information in it's place [author, title, etc].  And there is a short description with each article.  And finally, each article has a list of key words that are pertinent to that article, to help enhance searches.

No matter how old the MR data is, it shouldn't take more than creating a translator program to extract the old data out of the database and insert it into a new database.  Once in the new database, we should be able to bring the data up to speed - enhance, embellish, and add to the information.

Good luck, everybody - I hope at the very least a open source platform can become a reality.