Frequently Asked Questions

---

• Are all articles and pages from each active magazine OCR'd and online?

  Not *all* articles - but all the good stuff is! There are a number of articles in each issue that are not that interesting or are too dated, some as record reviews, news items, reviews of users' recordings, competitions, advertisements and so on. I've decided, at least at first, to concentrate on the interesting stuff - gear reviews, features, and artist interviews.

  However, all the magazine page scans are online for each full magazine so the contents that aren't OCR'd can still be read from the large page scans.

  Some of the smaller stuff I will likely go back and process at a later date, but it's not a priority. I intended this site to be both an archive of these magazines but also to offer all the useful info online - and some of the smaller stuff just doesn't have that much value, considering the amount of work it takes to get each issue up.

  In the case of the early Electronics & Music Maker issues, mainly the first year run, E&MM was essentially an electronics magazine, with a mainly music theme - but there is non-music content and non-music-related electronics projects, which are largely outside the scope of this site - so I won't be processing those for now (though the page scans of the full issue will of course be available).

  Again, like the other items of less interest we're not processing for now, for the sake of completeness it would be good to go back and add all of that extra stuff in, but it's a lower priority. If you are desperate for some of this stuff, like scans of the non-music electronics projects, then please see the "There's some info from a magazine you have that isn't online yet. Can you send it to me?" FAQ entry below.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• Can I see the full page scans?

  Yes - the page scans can be opened from the "Show Page Scans" link at the top of the magazine contents and articles pages.

  The number to the right is the number of pages available - in the case of the magazine contents, this will be the full page count of the magazine as all pages are available, and when looking at an article, this will contain only the pages for that article.

  Clicking on any of the small page scan images opens up the large page scan viewer. You can use the left/right cursor keys to quickly scroll through pages in either view.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• Are PDF's of the magazines available for download?

  In general, no, not at this time. Rather than taking the easy option and just scanning to PDF's and putting them up for download, I made the decision that it was far more useful to have a full searchable content-management system online.

  There are additional advantages to having fully OCR'd articles as well, like fixing typos and grammer problems, incorporating errata published in later issues, and the ability to do targeted searches and link to individual articles.

  However, once a given publication is complete through crowdsourcing, and pages of poor quality have been replaced as well as we can, then I may well eventually do PDF's of the magazines for archival purposes. But that's a way off yet.

  There is an exception for the US mag, Polyphony, where we are making available PDF copies available as we go.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• This seems like a lot of work. Why did you decide to do this?

  I want to be able to preserve and access this material before it's gone forever. You can read more about this in the About page.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• What about copyright? Who owns all this stuff?

  The copyright of content belongs to the original or current copyright holders - this info is displayed on every page of content. Individual article copyright tends to be retained with the original authors, rather than the publisher.

  Most of these magazines are no longer running, or have been bought up by other publishing companies. Generally there is limited commercial value in this old content to the current rights holders, so it's unlikely that they would not want this content online as long as it's done respectfully and with appropriate copyright notices, and efforts have been made to obtain permissions and blessings of people involved - and this has been backed up by conversations with the rights holders I have already communicated with.

  If you believe you are the owner of some of this content and wish to discuss it, please let me know. Authors can add their contact info to their content if they wish, or restrict some or all of their articles from being published for some reason if they really do not want them archived here. Again, contact me to arrange this.

  I am not in a position to license anything, so if there are legal ownership issues over some content, then it will have to be removed from the site.

  You can read more on copyright here.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• Some magazines are missing? Will you be putting them up?

  I will be uploading the magazines I have, and ones that have been contributed to the site from other sources. I also from time to time purchase missing issues (mostly eBay) but this is costly and without donations the funds available for this are limited (and I've spent plenty on this already!).

  If there are issues missing, it means I don't have them - if you have them lurking in storage, then it would be great if you could contribute or donate them, especially if you can scan them and deliver them digitally - see the Contribute section for more details.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• Will you be adding other magazine publications?

  In addition to the mags currently visible on the site, there are other magazines that we are collecting and/or have issues of that we may wish to include. I haven't found, or attempted to contact the rights holders of these publications yet, so have not made them publicly visible - but yes, new publications may be added over time. If you have something you think we might want to add to the site, do let us know.

  In some cases, it might be that contacting, or indeed even finding out who the current rights holders are of a given publication, proves difficult or impossible. If and when that happens, I will make a decision as to whether including the content here is worthwhile, and if I decide to publish it, it will have the most up to date copyright information I have and a note that the content has been used without permission for archival and reference purposes.

  With the currently live publications, and the ones I hope to include, we have a lot of work to get them all online. I currently have no desire to widen the scope of the site to broadcast or professional trade audio magazines, music or instrumental magazines, or "band" and record magazines.

  I will not be including content from magazines still publishing, such as Future Music or Computer Music (the notable exception being Sound On Sound as we have special permission to include the early issues only), or magazines from non-UK sources (eg US magazines, or US-versions of UK magazines at this time) and will not be including content from magazine archives which are available online elsewhere. The goal of mu:zines is to bring online content which is currently not available online at all.

  However, from time to time, we may add certain publictions of special value if we feel we can do a good job building an archive of them.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• I have some magazines - can I help?

  Absolutely - see the Contribute section for more details.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• I have some pages from a magazine issue you don't have, or a small part of an issue - shall I upload them?

  For now, no. Generally, a few pages here and there doesn't really help us out, we can't do much with them and they don't really help us reach our goal - it's far better to get the whole magazine.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• I have found some scans or content online from issues you don't have. Do you want it?

  We don't take unsolicited files from the internet, unless the person who did the scanning work has personally given permission to use their files. If the scans are good, then by all means send in the link, or even better, ask the owner if they will donate their scans to the mu:zines project.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• Is it possible to get higher quality pictures?

  I can only scan the pictures from the magazine, and in some cases the quality is not great - some of the magazines were pre-digital typesetting as well. I have higher resolution versions of the pictures than the versions on the site, but in most cases access to these doesn't make sense, the web versions are plenty big enough to see to give context to the articles, and the page scans are also available to see the original layout.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• Can you tell me when you think a particular issue I'm interested in might be done and available?

  No - I really have no idea when I will get to any particular issue other than the next few I'm currently working on. It depends on where in the queue they are, and the work and time involved in getting there.

  As explained in the publishing rotation notes on the home page, I'm generally working forward from earliest to most recent issue dates, and do half a year's worth of issues per publication in turn, so you should be able to get an idea of whether I'm more likely to get to an issue you are interested soon or not. Each loop through the publication rotation involves processing about 70 issues, about 1400 hours of work to give you an idea of the workloads I am dealing with, so I can't tell you when an issue in three loops' time will be done.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• There's some info from a magazine you have that isn't online yet. Can you send it to me?

  Generally speaking, I'm not prepared to do this, as I'm opening myself up to extra work on demand and making exceptions to the workflow to accommodate it.

  I'm more amenable to going out of my way to help, within reasonable limits, people who have contributed, supported or helped us out with this project in return, but please note I'm not a scan-to-order service and I have my own workflow and timescales to work to.

  Please note: There is a difference between:-

  "I'd like you to solve my problem for me, and after you do that work and deliver what I require, I'll pay for it with a donation to the site",
  versus:-
  "Hey, I appreciate what you're doing, and I wanted to say thanks, and have just helped support the project by leaving a small donation. I know it's cheeky, but if possible I'd love to get your help with something that's not online but that you might have, if it's not too much trouble. I really would like to get this content for a thing I'm doing, for the following reasons..." etc.

  The latter approach makes me want to help you out. The first one just makes me a cheap solution to your problem, at my expense.

  Also: If you have a genuine need for help with research for magazine, book, video and other media projects, contact me and I will do my best to be helpful.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• You have many "Scanned" issues that aren't "Active" yet. When will these issues get online?

  It's not a case of just flipping a switch to turn 80-200 page issues into fully searchable, tagged, OCR'd, formatted and proofed articles. It takes somewhere between 8-20 hours of work for one issue, and there is only one guy to do it!

  Issues are worked on in a rotation of typically about 6 month's worth of issues for each publication - so, for instance I'll do the next 6 issues of eg H&SR (from the next earliest to be done), then the next 6 issues of IM, and so on, throughout the publications in rotation, rather than just sticking to one publication to completion.

  As a result of the recent poll, I'm extending the publishing rotation of the three most popular mags - SOS, MT & E&MM - to 12 issues (a full year's worth) instead of 6 each time their turn comes around.

  You can see the next few issues in the publishing rotation to get an idea of what's coming next on the front page under "Next issues to be added".

  All UK publications (plus Polyphony) are now in the publishing rotation.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• I've spotted a problem or error with an article. How do I report it?

  On each article, at the right hand side immediately under the cover image, is a link to "Article Feedback / Cite".

  Clicking on that will present a menu with options to choose the type of issue you're reporting, eg whether it's text related, image related and so on, together with a text field for a small description of the problem - eg "Typo: M1D1 should be MIDI".

  I will get a notification of these and have a process to review and fix them. I greatly appreciate help to improve the archive quality by fixing things I might have missed - thank you!

  Please note that I do not use tedious form submission validation mechanisms like Captcha as they are annoying and put barriers up for people to help. This means I have to employ various procedures to stop spammers ruining everything for all of us. If you've submitted a correction, or something that you think I might have missed, it's possible it got filtered out - in this case, please follow up by sending me an email or feedback form. I think this is a better solution in general than forcing people to jump through hoops to help improve the site. Thanks!

  - Back / Top
  
  

• How can I cite an article on the site?

  On each article, at the right hand side immediately under the cover image, is a link to "Article Feedback / Cite".

  Clicking on that will reveal the feedback form, and below that, there are links to generate citation code for Wikipedia, in both short and long formats. You can click "Copy to clipboard" to copy the code for pasting into Wikipedia, or you can Show to the code to inspect or manually copy/paste.

  In addition, articles support the Google/Highwire tagging format, which is scraped by many citation tools such as Zotero, as well as Google Scholar - so the correct metadata should be picked up by whatever citation tool you use that supports this standard.

  If you have any other citation/reference needs not covered by the above tools, let me know and I'll see what I can do!

  - Back / Top
  
  

• I've found some content which I find objectionable or offensive. Why is this here? Can you edit or remove it?

  This project aims to preserve and make accessible archive content from articles published over the last 50 years or so, and as such this content reflects the attitudes and standards of their time - not those of today.

  This material is of historical and cultural interest, and much as I can't edit the scans of these magazines, I also do not wish to edit, tone down or rewrite historical content to fit in with the attitudes and standards of the world today. Please bear this in mind when viewing the content.

  - Back / Top
  
  

• Can you pass on the contact details of the author of a particular article for me? I'd like to discuss something with them...

  There are nearly 700 individual authors (at the time of writing) that have contributed to these magazines over the last 50 years. I do not have contact details for all of them, nor have I been in contact with everybody - only a small fraction in fact.

  Some of them are happy to have their contact details added to their articles, and in these cases when they have asked, I am happy to add them. Otherwise, it's not my place to pass on contact details of others without their express permission.

  In the first instance, I recommend spending a little time sleuthing them down on the internet (that's what I do!) - some are fairly easy to find, and others less so. Of course, in some cases, the authors aren't even around any more, so the chances of being able to contact the people you'd like are slim, but sometimes that's all you can do.

  I'll again note that I welcome any article authors to get into contact with me, and if you would like your contact details, website, social media or whatever attached to your articles I have a mechanism for doing so. And if you have any stories to tell about your time working on this content - publishable or not - I'd love to hear them!

  - Back / Top
  
  

• Are there any stats/numbers about your content and project progress?

  Yes, the following link will display the overall project progress and more nerdy stats for those following along.

  > http://www.muzines.co.uk/?stats=1

  If you'd like more info than that, we have a more complete stats page here:

  > http://www.muzines.co.uk/stats

  - Back / Top
  
  

• It's been a while since another issue has been published. Have you stopped, or put this project on hold?

  No. Sometimes, it may seem like nothing has moved forward on the site in terms of new content. However, this doesn't mean things aren't happening in the background. In addition to publishing new issues, I also have other things to do: site development (new features, fixing bugs), scanning issues, acquiring issues and managing donation collections, obtaining permissions and researching/contacting rights holders, improving the data, the blog, social media activities and so on.

  In addition, often life gets in the way, and my attention and focus sometimes has to be on other things. However, I'm committed to moving this project forward for the long haul - but the speed of forward movement may vary in any given month, depending on the priorities. This is a free resource, and I think I'm giving pretty good value for money in general..!

  - Back / Top
  
  

• I like what you are doing and want to help - how can I contribute?

  Over and above supplying missing issues, and giving some monetary donations to the site to help out with costs, we have a Slack channel for contributors to communicate and co-ordinate. Please email me if you want to get an invite to this, and why we should let you in!

  In time, it might be that I can open up the CMS to contributors to let other people help process content, and thus speed up getting content online, but that's something to be decided a little down the line.

  - Back / Top
  
  

Have a question that isn't covered here? Drop us a line via the feedback form, email, or Twitter...

Magazines Needed - Can You Help?

Do you have any of these magazine issues?

> See all issues we need

If so, and you can donate, lend or scan them to help complete our archive, please get in touch via the Contribute page - thanks!