re: Welcome to MICAT-L

[<Bob.Barclay@banyan.dgim.doc.ca> (Bob Barclay)]

This is the first time I have addressed everybody on a list and I am
naturally a bit cautious. I have been communicating with colleagues
through email for a while, and sometimes they have received reams of
gobbledeegook. This one will be clean, as I hope will any future
texts I send to you all, but the anxiety is still there.

I came on the MICAT scene shortly before Cary Karp and Friedemann
Hellwig had produced the first and last volume of Musical Instrument
Conservation and Technology in 1978. There were not enough people
working in the business to support a hard copy venture that long ago,
and perhaps there still aren't. Though it looked like a great idea,
it didn't have the steam.

It was in 1982 in Stockholm that Friedemann Hellwig, Cary Karp and I
discussed the Musical Instrument Conservators Computer Users
Programming Society. (My input was the acronym.)  If I remember
rightly, Cary was the President, Scott Odell was Secretary (in 
absentio), Friedemann was Treasurer, and I was the Membership. This 
organization blended into the brief foray in the Canadian Heritage 
Information Network's ENVOY email system. Again, before its time, and 
addressing only a limited audience.

Finally, with MICAT-L I think all these dreams of communication
among all out there with even a marginal interest in musical
instrument conservation and technology will come to fruition. I urge
people to come forward with good stuff.

I have subscribed to a couple of unmoderated lists, and unsubscribed 
after only a few days because of the piles of unmitigated rubbish 
they contained. Perhaps there were pearls buried there, but I didn't 
have the patience to find them. 

This list will be moderated, and like any other learned organization, one 
should expect to find material of quality here. I am looking forward to 
watching this develop.

Bob Barclay, Senior Conservator, Ethnology, Canadian Conservation Institute.