Matthew Caulfield's commentary in 081108 MMDigest on the accessibility
for research of items, such as the great gift from Q. David Bowers of
the Music Trade Review (MTR) which has now been scanned in its entirety,
makes me think that having used a "modern method" of duplicating the
MTR for use by researchers, we ought to use equally "modern methods"
for making the data available.  Here are a couple of ways of thinking
about it.

1. The scanned files equal about 200 GB.  An external hard drive of
250 GB is readily available for $70 plus shipping.  The researcher
could buy such a hard drive, send it to the MBSI together with an
appropriate contribution (or let the MBSI suggest a flat rate) and
shipping costs and the scanned data could be copied easily from the
master file onto the researcher's hard drive.  Once the copying method
has been established the whole process can be automatic and requires
only the plugging together of the source and the external HD.

2. The MBSI could buy, say, a half-dozen hard drives and load the MTR
scan on each of them and then "rent" them out for a nominal (say $50)
contribution.

3. The MBSI could arrange to buy such a hard drive "on demand" for,
say, cost plus 25% which would include loading the MTR scanned files.

There are dozens of variations on this theme but the result should be
to allow the researcher to do his/her research at home, at his/her own
pace without having to go anywhere and without having to handle either
the original pages or accessing the "master" copy of the scanned files.

Should the MBSI want to try this approach I would be glad to purchase,
say, four hard drives of 250 GB for this purpose as a contribution to
the MBSI's ability to provide research materials to serious researchers
in this fascinating subject.

Frank Metzger