Even though the magazine's extinct for a decade and a half now, it's not gone forever. Besides this website, you can find some articles, art, editorial content, books, and even entire issues scanned or second-hand if you know where to look. As I might have mentioned already, if you're interested in the outdoor world or history of Michigan, it's well worth the hunt!
'Breaking News!' A few old MNR
issues scanned by DNR!:
As of January 2014 the MDNR seems to have a few early (and,
oddly, one 1991) issues available on the "digital dnr"
website.
This is exciting for me too, since I don't have any of those
old issues yet myself, so I get to see the early years and get
a little more history for this website.
Unfortunately, they have a rather unwieldy 'interface' that
makes it a very time-consuming process to view just a single
page at a time as a jpg or pdf -- and then you have to repeat
the process over for every page... The intro page seems a
little confused, too, since it states that "Since 1931, the
Department of Natural Resources (then the Michigan Department
of Conservation) has been publishing a monthly
bulletin/magazine", when of course you know that it was killed
off in 1999 - 15 years ago already! I couldn't find any contact
on the website to see if I might assist or add my scans, but
hopefully you can find a fast connexion and look at these few
issues - and hopefully they'll add more and make them less
"state secret"-y format in future. What's so doggoned hard
about making them into single issue PDFs (like Minnesota, for
example) if all the pages are there already? On the other hand,
this very website you're looking at now also has single
pages... a little easier to look through I think...
The following is more scribbling than comprehensive, it'll get better, I swear!
The Great Lakes Pilot & Mariner
newspaper, of Grand Marais, usually has reprinted text from
MC in its issues (as well as a lot of other reprinted and new
writing).
Search bookfinder or other used
book search and metasearch engines to see which used
bookstores might have issues for sale [the link searches
keywords 'michigan, conservation', adjust to see other matches,
tweak search by keyword, title, author, and misspellings to
maximize potential].
Check local used bookshops, antique and second-hand stores, library and school rummage sales, yard sales, etc. -- you never know what you'll find! The first issues that I bought back in the early 1990s were a couple nice library-bound volumes from a yard sale in wealthy East Grand Rapids - regular folk are bound (pun intended) to have them now and then too, maybe not expensively bound.
There are usually single issues for sale on Ebay, sometimes there are batches of multiple, even many issues. Try this search to start.
You might also try the 'etsy' website.
As of March 2010, here's an online ad with a very good collection of magazines for sale as a batch! In March 2011 they're still listed...
As of March 2010, this paper ephemera dealer has number of MC and MNR magazines for sale individually!
According to conversations I had in early 2010, the Michigan State Archives has long-range ideas or hopes or dreams to scan these.
In the same discussions I learned that most of the Ozz Warbach drawings are now in the archive. See here, for example.
Many libraries in Michigan have full or partial runs of the magazine; check your local municipal and college libraries, also try 'ANSWER', The Library of Michigan's Online Catalog, MeLCat (the big unified Michigan public library search), a university catalog, or Worldcat.
Here's [need to add link; forgive me if I forgot!] a link to a running search/list I've got on Worldcat of MC/MNR related holdings at libraries.
Some of the content was published in identical or edited format in books, which are usually easier to find for sale or in libraries (see above); see the section on related content for leads.
Search the web, you never know what you'll find there
either!
Website by Robert Liebermann | © and last edit:
2016.11.25
location: http://michiganconservation.net/where.htm