Volume 10, Number 4
1997

This is the Final Issue

The Alkaline Paper Advocate was first published in January 1988, soon after the paper industry's conversion to alkaline paper began to accelerate. (Pfizer's decision to build onsite PCC plants was a major factor in that acceleration, and MTI and SMI, spin-offs from Pfizer, still play a leading role in the spread of alkaline papermaking around the world.)

Now that most U.S. consumers know they have access to a wide variety of alkaline papers, and now that the historical transition to a new kind of papermaking has been recorded, the APA's mission has been accomplished.

This project leaves behind a variety of products, supplies and detritus, which take up space and need to be cleared out.

Two or three hundred copies of each back issue, all printed on permanent paper of course. These could be compiled and bound for sale to libraries; but all volumes up to the last two issues are mounted and searchable on our home page at http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byorg/abbey, where they may be more useful to people than if they were bound into books.

The final edition of our 60-page booklet, North American Permanent Papers, came out this summer, and will be useful for another three or four years. We hope to sell them all, of course.

Extra copies and superseded editions of reference books. These will be listed in our clearance sale for the cost of postage and handling. We will notify subscribers of this, when we send out the index to Volume 10.

A four-drawer file cabinet full of information, filed by subject. This should help me answer questions that come in by telephone and mail, for as long as they continue.

Back issues of 10 or 12 journals received on exchange subscriptions, some going back to 1988, on papermaking and related subjects. They will be listed and probably offered first to conservation scientists and labs.

TAPPI proceedings and books on different aspects of papermaking and paper permanence; two or three shelves' worth.

But the most valuable thing that will be left over when this project is closed down is time. I look forward to taking weekends off now and then, catching up on publication of the Abbey Newsletter, writing to my friends, repairing my house, and making my garden grow.