Let me state at the outset I am a member of the Society and I thought the AGM in Sheffield could have been done better. I think the society is currently metro-centric. I have a number of worries about the society's direction as well but we must not blindly wave sticks about and hope they hit a target.

I am not sure for example what this means: And are the important bits already online going to remain forever stuck behind the JSTOR academic paywall? To what precisely are you referring?

As far as I am aware there is no paywall of any sort to access material on-line - should anyone wish as a non-member wish to avail themselves of the library it is £3.50 a shot. Remarkably inexpensive I would have thought. But all the material on-line is available free of charge. And so is the library to members of the EFDSS.

As for seeking the help of American Universities (the link goes to a page called Open Folklore) what precisely do you want them to do? Send people across to digitize material? I suspect they might just balk at that.

My experience of the RVWML is that the librarian knows more about what is happening in the folk world than most and that he is an excellent librarian with top-class knowledge. Most people's experience of him is the same. So what do you want the Americans to do?

What that link seems to show to me is that well-funded institutions to do with folklore can produce excellent materials on line.

Well looking at the Take Six project and the Sharp Diaries so can RVWML as well. You might care to note that the RVWML is hoping to get its whole library catalogue on-line eventually, starting with the Leslie Shephard collection. It says so on the website.

Digitising material like this is an enormous and an enormously expensive task and of course people involved have to spend a lot of time fund-raising rather than doing their "proper" job. Anyone who has applied for funding knows it only comes for specific projects. So first decide your project and then apply to the correct place and for a justifiable amount. Not the easiest of tasks. But it is simple given unlimited amounts of money.

Compare the Irish equivalent of the RWVML, the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

I suspect the EFDSS would like the £4,000,000 state contribution to the setting up and the €750,000 per year funding the ITMA gets. They started the process of putting their catalogue on line in 2008, and are doing a great job, but they have two full-time digitisation staff!! Plus a lot of others!