The E-Sylum:  Volume 9, Number 12, March 19, 2006, Article 5

THE DOWN SIDE OF LOOSE-LEAF BOOKS

Dick Johnson writes: My friend Katie Jaeger mentions loose-leaf
as a format for coin books in last week's E-Sylum. I have had
experience with three such publications.

In the 1960s I subscribed to an Interpol (yes, that Interpol!)
publication. Intended for counterfeit currency preventions it
published all new currency issued in the world. It updated it
often by sending out new loose-leaf pages. Because it was sent
airmail it was printed on very thin light weight paper. Sometimes
it replaced a previous page, often it was new pages. Inserting
these and keeping it up to date was a hassle. Despite its
subscription cost of several hundred dollars a year (?) I ended
up just adding new pages at the end, ultimately dropping my
subscription.

Second example: Robert Ray Heath, who died last December 11th,
published all his works on New England city medals by loose-leaf.
I was a great admirer of Bob's work and reported on this in the
E-Sylum (vol 5, no 20, article 11, May 12, 2002) where I listed
the number of editions of his works by state: Connecticut (5),
Maine (3), Massachusetts (8), New Hampshire (5), Rhode Island (4),
Vermont (4).

Here is what I wrote: "He devotes a page to each medal. The
shortcoming, however, is that his catalogs are looseleaf. The
pages are half lettersize (8 ½ x 5 1/2) and he punches them for
your 3-ring binders. Unfortunately I had only two binders that
size, so all the other state catalogs are in boxes." [They are
still in boxes years later!]

Third example: John J. Gabriel published a book in 1983 on the
medallic work on the Statue of Liberty by loose-leaf. He self
published this and chose this format for its low cost. He reproduced
it by photocopy but blundered the page numbering [pages 23-25 follow
202] in addition to numerous textual errors.

In summary, loose-leaf is great for compiling and organizing data.
I have some fifty plus notebooks in my office today. But NOT for
publication. How much better any of these would have been in pamphlet
format?  When the amount of new material justifies updating - put
out a new bound edition. Don't make me insert random pages, it's a
hassle."

Howard Spindel writes: "I considered the looseleaf format for my
shield nickel reference, and discarded the idea because of a number
of limitations.  Ms. Jaeger notes that updates to her Mechanical
Engineering book were distributed quarterly. I can distribute
updates daily, if needed.

There is a cost associated with mailing updates. I distribute
updates electronically, at no cost other than my time.  Perhaps
most importantly, my reference contains five to eight high resolution
photos of each variety. The cost of printing photo quality pages
would be very high. There are now about 2100 high resolution photos
in the shield nickel reference!

The cost issues alone make a numismatic reference with a limited
audience infeasible unless the per copy cost is raised to some
large amount to pro-rate the costs over the size of the audience.
Producing the reference in computerized form allows me to keep the
costs down so that it is reasonable for all of world's shield nickel
variety collectors (who could probably fit in a single small hotel
room).

It's not just distribution of updates that a computerized reference
addresses.   Cost is an even greater driver.  And I haven't even
mentioned the inherent advantages of a properly designed computerized
reference, such as easy searching."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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