How come reality never follows the plan? While adding new covers is running a little behind schedule, the Museum did reach its most important milestone far in advance of expectation: receiving covers from other collectors. This is fantastic news because once I finish scanning in my collection, I must rely on others to provide covers. This early success on a key requirement of the Museum's health and longevity gives me great hope.
My personal collection contains only 1200 covers. It is far too small in breadth and depth to provide a reasonable survey of postmarks and cachets. That is why contributions from other collectors is paramount to the success of the Museum. There are so many covers out there that one person cannot get them all. However, if we pool our resources, we can build a virtual collection with no rival and assemble a premier resource for Naval Cover collectors.
All the functions originally envisioned for the Museum are now available (except for the exhibits area - I'm working on it) and I thought of a couple more functions / indices since then. Three of the new indices were added with this latest update. I have two more in mind and will probably add them in the next six months. That should be enough (famous last words?).
As of our six month anniversary, I have no idea how many people have visited the Museum. Although the web hosting service keeps some kind of log of hit rates, I have not bothered to look up the information. It's not important! I know it will take time for word to spread and interest to grow and I know it will take time to build up enough content (covers) to make this resource useful. I'll keep working on it.
As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions.
Paul Bunter
April 22, 2001