Although The Mainsheet covered all twenty republics, its focus was primarily on South America.
In 1980, under the editorship of Bernard Davies, The Central American Newsletter was launched as a sister publication to The Mainsheet. Bernard edited until his death in 1985 when Mike Birks took over the helm.
The CAN ran for twenty years, the final 81st issue being published in October 2000.
All the Central American countries are represented but Costa Rican, Nicaraguan and Honduran collectors will especially find much of interest.
It is worth mentioning that both The Mainsheet and CAN came with indexes for ease of reference. Again, highly recommended.
Is it still available? Preferably as PDF or electronic document. I would love to add to my Zotero online Latin America resources.
It was never digitized to the best of my knowledge and is rarely available in hard copy. I happen to have a complete run on eBay at the moment but they do not appear very often.
The Central American Newsletter was never digitised by me and I no longer have my original copies. It was prepared pre-computer on an electronic typewriter and the originals were not kept either.
Mike Birks
Hello Michael,
I have a complete digital set of the Central American Newsletter. Would I have your permission to donate this set to the Global Philatelic Library, the National Postal Museum or archive.org so it will remain available to collectors?
To Nick: In my experience, most collectors would still prefer a paper version. These are however hard to come by. Postage and shipping costs make it even harder. They have skyrocketed in the last two years.
I’m somewhat conflicted when it comes to paper resources Peter.
My preference is always for books and physical documents.
But the sheer volume of material means that digital copies are often far more practical…there is only so much shelf space!
And pdf documents are fast becoming the norm, as the latest crop of catalogues is evidencing…
I share your sentiment: I do prefer books and physical documents.
However, I have collected 200Gb of digital books, journals and other documents which would require a large room to be stored. But they can easily be stored on my computer and the backup system my son created.
For my project, digital is also easier. I can have links to open access documents. There is a wealth of digitized books and journals that I could give access to. I am still in the process of getting societies to give open access to their journals. And some are, but maybe by accident. Several South American Societies can be access for free, but are not yet open.
I tried to get membership of two societies (Brasil and Haiti), but they did not reply to three attempts for membership. Their journals might no longer be available and may disappear like Mike’s Central American Newsletter. It would be a shame that the philatelic world would lose that much information.
The Digitizing project has given us access to the Essay-Proof Journal, The American Journal of Philately (both at archive.org). The Global Philatelic Library gives access to many books mentioned in the Crawford Library index, like the forgery books by Earee.
It is not just the ease of access, but also a monetary issue. Most of the books today sell for 50-100 USD, without postage. I can not afford to buy all the books or journals I am interested in. During the last year, I have gained so much information because of my project. I would love to see other collectors having access to more resources.
I have found a digitized run of all CAN. I also bought a large run at the latest auction from the LACA. This also included a large run of the Mainsheet. I also have found a digitized complete run from the Mainsheet. Both digitized journals are not the greatest of versions, but it will help to add references to all articles from both journals to my Zotero reference library (https://www.zotero.org/groups/4416851/phlatelic_resources_-articles_books_websites/library).