Bonjour Phil Benson,  You wrote in the 98.01.07 Digest: "If any MMDers
have details of a collection or museum that could be added to the "Fair
Organ Preservation Society" list, ..."

On the web site Musica Mecanica, besides many other things (listing of
associations, coming events, images of instruments, etc.) you may find
a large listing of more than 180 museums throughout the world.  Musica
Mecanica:

    http://www.cnam.fr/museum/musica_mecanica/

I am able to establish this listing thanks to personal research and
the contributions and publications of several associations: AAIMM
(France), FOPS (GB), GSM (Germany), KDV (Netherlands), MBSI (USA),
MMD (Mechanical Music Digest on Internet) and many miscellaneous
connections, as credited on the Museum page on the site.  I try to
update or correct the information as soon as I discover it or when
people give me information.

So, Phil Benson: you may of course use for the FOPS all the information
you need from Musica Mecanica, which is public information (and part of
it comes from your publications :-)).

Of course, if you find anything you didn't find elsewhere, please
credit me and Musica Mecanica, giving its http address, as many other
sites have already done, and I really want to thank them all very much
for that !

Perhaps should I add again that I do not receive any money to gather
and present all the information which is on Musica Mecanica.  Other
people work in the same way; Joyce Brite, for example, with her
Mechanical Music Exchange site on the web.

(MMD is very different, because it is a very harsh, several hours a
day, day-to-day editing business I would certainly not like to do !
So I think the annual voluntary contribution is normal, as long as it
does not become compulsory, which would transform our dear very inter-
national MMD into another third or fourth American Association of
mechanical music).

I do this work on Musica Mecanica (1) for fun (I am probably crazy),
(2) because I have the luck to put it on a good web site (Musee des
Arts et Metiers du CNAM in Paris, with the technical help of their Web
editor Olivier Delaroziere), and (3) because it seems to be useful to
many people.

I strongly believe that the more we share information, the more
people will be able to create interesting things, and live a happier
and richer life (I am probably  crazy again in believing in this !).
I stop there my preaching.

  [ "Amen, 'Pere' Rouille!"  and "Right on!"  -- Robbie

Best regards from France,

Philippe Rouille  (Paris, France)
http://www.cnam.fr/museum/musica_mecanica/