It's a website started spring 2010 to tell you about the Michigan Conservation, later Michigan Natural Resources magazine, which was published by the Michigan Department of Conservation (later the Department of Natural Resources) from 1931 to 1999.
The magazine's exquisite span of nearly 70 years contains not just a wealth of text, photos, and maps about of hunting, fishing, camping, forestry, fisheries, natural history, departmental policy, and land management in Michigan (sometimes elsewhere), but the most complete record of conservation history in Michigan for the 20th century. In its long run, the magazine won numerous awards and accolades for its exceptional journalism and editorship; beautiful art, photography, and design; and high print quality. We used to be able to do things like that in government.
After the Michigan Natural Resources's destruction during
the disastrous 1990s 'privatization' craze of the engler
regime, it seems to have been mostly forgotten by the public.
This website intends to remedy that by showing that there
exists in their public libraries and perhaps even personal
collections a vast and unsurpassed encyclopedia of Michigan
outdoor lore and history!
The magazine gives us some valuable perspective in the history of its pages even now, after being gone for nearly 20 years: it tells us a little bit about how things used to be ... back when going outside was influenced less by sophisticated 'lifestyle marketing' and image identity than by the pleasure of an established way of life and self-developed interests. When the promotion of knowledge and skills was more important in publishing an 'outdoors' magazine than the promotion of the latest 'gear' or fads. When the colors of nature were considered the attraction, not the garish colors of product logos. When people cared more about going outside than being identified with going outside.
This website will show you the magazine covers, tables of
contents, and some of the art and articles that were published.
It'll also give some information on the history and people who
made the magazine, how it flourished and served, and how it
died. It'll have related information, such as books published
by the magazine or authored by its staff; some information on
the circulation and press of the magazine; and maybe a few
examples of similar publications that still exist. It will tell
where you can, even now, still find some remaining elements of
the magazine.
Since I have a collection mainly from the late 1940s to the end, that's what I'll have to present for now, but anyone who has older issues is encouraged to contribute!
Progress April 2012:
In April 2012 I'm finally getting back to adding some content... As mentioned below, most everything was scanned, at least initial selections from each issue, two years ago now... I was looking for a logical and easy to use interface to display the page scans, with little luck, so for now just using my standby image viewer version I use for photos elsewhere.
In the last week or so I've gotten all the images processed for all the issues to 1950, for 1968, for 1980, and a few others, now just need to get the pages for them together.
The problem is that the full-size scans have to be fairly big to be readable, so some page scrolling is necessary (unless you have a vertical screen, which I highly reccomend, especially if you have two monitors), which messes things up a little, and I haven't been able to find a good set of code for that. The other thing that's taking forever (in my spare time) is processing the original flatbed scans to look decent, and, of course, the hand-typing of the HTML and CSS code for the pages. No automation here, this is all hand-typed!
Late 2011 I was finally getting around to preparing and adding some of the content to the website, but was been poking along... See the index by year for what's added so far!
In 2010 I finished scanning all the covers, tables of contents, editorials, and many articles from my collection in the spring of 2010 while I was still in the UP, and got a few other interesting documents at NMU library. There's something from every issue 1949 until the magazine's end in 1999, and a few earlier ones too.
It'll be a lot of work just to get the magazine information added, but I've already got some other ideas for related content to add after that - like information on the DOC/DNR county map series (ca. late 1930s to the final edition in 1983) and relatives, the UP Lure books (1935-1958 with earlier and later relatives), important early 20th century Michigan conservationists (P. S. Lovejoy and Harold Titus come to mind), and the history of the Michigan Land-Economic Survey (surprisingly obscure).
Website by Robert Liebermann | © and last edit:
2012.04.30
location: http://michiganconservation.net/