I have long lamented the fact that the New ConRod does not even have an annual index. Other club magazines do, and it does help when trying to find something you know you have read but just can not recall how long ago it was. That is, of course, assuming you have been subscribing to the magazine for years and years to have read it in the first instance.
The Scott Owners club, smaller than the LDMCC, several years ago compiled all their technical articles into a simple photocopied book called the "Technicalities" and it was a great success. More recently it got a second lease on life by being converted to digital format and distributed first on Compact Disk and then as a direct download from the member's website. This is much more convenient than distributing the hard copies, as one binder of Technicalities, printed double sided, was some two and a half inches thick! Now they have gone one further and are scanning all the back issues of their club magazine into digital format. So now newer members can have a full library instead of spending years trying to build a complete, and now collectable set. Unfortunately this digital copy does not have searchable text, something they looked into but for whatever reason were unable to incorporate. I did some experimentation into this for one of the folks collaborating on the project. The character recognition software that comes with most scanners is just getting better and better with each year. Pity they could not include it, as searchable text would make it a lot easier to find all occurrences of say "Freddie Dixon" in all back issues. I would suggest anyone contemplating such a project make searchable text a mandatory feature.
-Doug