"Wow - where do you see LTrad or fRoots on the newsstand"

As has been said, I often see them for sale, and every Borders I have been in has a reasonalbe selection of folk mags.

I have just let my membership lapse for the simple reason that I can't actually afford it (I'm a freelancer and everyone wants their pound of flesh from us!) due to cashflow problems and at £35 it's just too much money at the moment. I could stay in for two weeks I suppose, but as I work on myu own I'd go crackers. I'll rejoin when a big cheque finally lands on my doormat. I think it's reasonable value for money - the journal is excellent and you get insurance for playing gigs.

As for the magazine, I don't think it's as slick as LT which is a more commercial concern, but the quality is always excellent, the articles interesting and the reviews good. No compliants there, but to get it on the newstands it'd have to have more pages.

EFGSS is London-centric though, no doubt about it (primarily because it's based there I suppose). For those of us that never get the Smoke it can seem a bit of waste of cash being a member when you may only visit the library once a decade. Moving it to a more central location and making it a national centre for folk music and dance would make it more relevant - perhaps along the lines of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann, which has vibrant branches across the country(ies) and which could teach music and dance to people across the land.

Digitising the library and making the entire collection available online to members would be a step forward too - the sound archive should be online and accessible as soon as possible, and this is well within the bounds of current technology.