The Philatelic Brain Drain

If you enjoy and benefit from this web site, you should support it with a donation. While a number of the moderators are volunteers, the electricity and other support costs are not free.

Sure, the information posted here is not always accurate, but usually someone in our dedicated community will call it out and quickly correct the record. I encourage you to support the APS and other professional organizations, but consider supporting SCF as well, to help ensure all the valuable information continues to remain available.

I will extend the plea to think about supporting StampSmarter.org too, and any other educational resources that you find useful.

I can't find the quote now but I once heard someone recommend spending like 10% of your stamp budget on books and other reference materials instead of putting it all into stamps. If you have ever learned anything from SCF, or simply been entertained, or if this web site has ever helped you to decide to buy (or avoid) a particular stamp, you should pay it forward and help support the site for future generations to continue to enjoy and benefit from.

Spot on, Rog. This is exactly what the APS should be doing. The hobby base keeps shrinking and such events will happen more and more frequently. This is more important than developing a digital magazine to appeal to the younger generation, etc. With the cost of digital archiving next to nothing, there's very little expense required to preserve all of this - the tricky and expensive part will be scanning, organizing, and making everything accessible. But well worth the effort, IMO.

"WHAT THE XXXX SHOULD BE DOING " yea agree somebody else should be doing it not YOU .

What do we got here 50 or 100 experience philatelist plus a 1,000 sometimes posters . Then what I seen over 10 years maybe 5 posters here posting information that I make notes from their postings .

Lets blame others for the Brain Drain ..... your problem here is you think your's should be some great scholarly work that is nice enough to be shown at the Smithstoniena

I have no idea what you mean by this, floortrader.

SCF is a fantastic resource and worthy of support, whether financial or through the volunteer-based sharing of knowledge. Nobody's thumbing their nose at the people posting here. I certainly am not. The wisdom of folks here is a lot more accessible than the dusty expertizing records of someone locked up in a file cabinet (or tossed in a dumpster...)

But those records and notes would be great to have, too. So the question is also, how do we get the folks who have literally done this for a living - experts, dealers, etc - to share their life's work with the rest of us once they move on.

I could be off base but the way that I interpret floortrader's sentiment and sarcasm is that people seem to be pointing the finger and not taking responsibility for any small steps can be done by individuals. "The APS should do this" or "the auction houses should do that". Instead, there are things we can do as individuals do to help preserve, expand and spread knowledge. Show off what you have or explain something new that you learned that someone else might find interesting and perhaps even get them interested in a new collecting area.

The point is you don't need a Gold award winning exhibit worthy of displaying at the Smithsonian to show off what you have. Post pictures of something interesting, even in a small way, and that can get the ball rolling.

I will expand that to say, if you are not a member of a local stamp club, join one. If you are a member of a club, what can you do to make it better. Does the club have the opportunity to 'show and tell' at the meetings? Does the club have an annual member's exhibit competition? Something to think about and volunteer to help organize if you are so inclined.

Everyone has different skills, interests, financial abilities, and ways of giving back to the hobby. The proverbial "time, talent', and treasure". Not everyone is an author or researcher or exhibitor or program presenter or organized collector or makes their collections available for others to study. We range from random accumulators to very detailed & organized collectors (I resemble both). Hopefully each collector finds their way to preserve their accumulated knowledge and share it back. If nothing else, be a good steward and pass along the material to the next generation.

The problem as I see that it is not so much finding philatelic information but instead, it is the lack of the ability of the viewers to differentiate between accurate information and inaccurate information. Critical think is on the decline ....

The other issue is that few collectors are willing to pay for information and much of the best philatelic information is hidden behind society membership or private paywalls.

I am in the process of donating my three websites (Philamercury, Sperati and rfrajola) to a society (not the APS) with the condition that all pages and the board will continue to be available to all with no membership requirement and no paywall or paid advertising.

Hi Richard - I'm happy to hear that. I hope that the society can find a qualified individual to administer those sites as well.

I appreciate the attempt to interpret Floortrader's commentary and also your thoughts. With all due respect I think we have gone way off track here though. This is about losing people (died) whose knowledge isn't preserved. It isn't about sharing in real-time with others or teaching. What happens to your knowledge when you pass on? I threw the APS out there, but it could be any well-known organization with the means to preserve and make available information. A central depository if you will. I can't explain the animus towards any one organization. That is a personal issue. My thought is that a lot of knowledge just disappears with a person's last breath and having a hodge-podge mishmash of disjointed websites or manila folders won't solve anything either. Something is better than nothing. The taking affront at the APS maybe playing a role is ridiculous. No one said they are the king-of-the-hill, end all-be all and that was not what was said. Someone doth protest too much.

". It isn't about sharing in real-time with others or teaching."

I disagree. If we publish in real time, then the info will not be lost when we pass.

I have published articles, but writing is slow and painful for me. The idea of an exhibit is too intimidating.

Ok, there are two parallel threads in this conversation, and I think they're becoming fused when perhaps they shouldn't be.

When Rog said, "It isn't about sharing in real-time with others or teaching"; I believe he was referring to his point. Not that those things aren't important, but that they are separate from what he was talking about. Dealers, expertizers, and what I would call professional philatelists have lots of notes, records, etc. Some have plans in place for their records when they pass; most probably don't. Look at Sismondo's notes and records, most of which apparently got binned.

So - one aspect of dealing with the philatelic brain drain is taking the information that has already been written down, securing access to it, and then coming up with a plan to make it safe and accessible for future generations.

OK. Deep breath.

Then - the other aspect of the brain drain. Those of us (myself included) who are not professionals but are active collectors, and who have accumulated some sort of knowledge that's not written down somewhere. This is what eyeonwall and floortrader have been talking about; by posting on forums such as this, valuable knowledge is collected, piece by piece, on a myriad of topics.

I don't think anyone is here disparaging one 'flavor' of knowledge or the other. Both exist, both are worth preserving, but the way that we go about it will be different in each case.

In the case of the folks with records, notes, etc. from years and decades of professional philately, we need to figure out a way to preserve that knowledge. It already exists written down, on paper or on the computer; we just need to hold onto it.

In the case of folks like most of us here, we can continue to help stem the drain by answering questions, supporting sites like this, etc., and in this manner help ensure that the knowledge that's in our heads gets written down for posterity's sake. Richard Frajola is to be commended for thinking this through, ensuring that his amazing resource will be around for some time to come.

"In the case of the folks with records, notes, etc. from years and decades of professional philately, we need to figure out a way to preserve that knowledge. It already exists written down, on paper or on the computer; we just need to hold onto it."

Just holding onto it doesn't make it useful. Many notes are often indecipherable by those that didn't make the notes.

Nobody knows how much time we have here on Earth and I'm sure many that have passed on probably considered at some point that the information/knowledge they have should be documented to preserve. With all the best intentions, a lot of times this just doesn't happen. In reading the posts here, it seems what is missing is what's the best way to preserve the knowledge. Maybe something as simple as a sticky note on the forum with information on how to do this might help? Get some feedback from the group here on ways to do it and add to the sticky post. This group here is not going to solve the problem, but if just a few see the information and take action, it's better than nothing.