NavList:

You know ... I was thinking just recently about old navigation books. Probably because I was staring at my small bookshelf of old navigation books, most of which I 'inherited' from Ken Gebhart. God rest his soul.

I wondered how many of these titles had been converted to digital format. Perhaps the Library of Congress has digitized many, IDK. Maybe organizations like Hathitrust and Google have digitized a few. I do know that Frank has provided as many links as he could find to historic navigation texts in the "Resources" tab above.

But how many books do we collectively own that relatively few people have access to? And is there a way for us to help provide access to them? IOW, between all of us, could we devise a plan to [cost-effectively] digitize navigation texts which are now in the public domain and create a publicly available archive? If so, I would be more than happy to do what I could to help.

Or is there another way? Perhaps a network of individuals who are willing to loan out books - just like any library - in order to facilitate learning and research. I'm just throwing ideas out there. I can tell you that I have been extremely glad to see some navigation texts published in their entirety, free of charge online. It has been a great help to me and I'd like to pay it forward.

Just some food for thought.

Cheers!

Sean C.

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