We are fortunate to live in an era of monumental development in world communication. This is made possible by the Internet, a worldwide link of computer resources. Although the Internet has existed since the late 1960’s in one form or another, it is only relatively recently that the system has become easily accessible to the public. With this technology there are new opportunities for the autograph collector that are limited only to the boundaries of imagination.

It is simple to access the Internet. One simply needs a computer, a modem, and a service provider. Service providers may be a online service such as America Online or Compuserve, or a local provider which may be found under the “Internet” listing in the yellow pages of the telephone book. Local service providers may be a little cheaper, but are not quite as straightforward for novices as the national providers and may provide additional services and information for its customers.

The following is an introduction to the means by which autograph collectors may use the Internet.

The World Wide Web:

The World Wide Web is a form of Internet communication in which information is transmitted through “pages” of pictures and text.

It is simple to access the WWW. One needs a “web browser” such as Netscape or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Once a browser is installed and an Internet connection is established simply enter an address to find the specific web page.

Here are some interesting web pages to explore--

UACC Official Web Site (http://www.uacc.org)--our official web page. It has the text of the UACC constitution, Code of Ethics, list of items for sale through the UACC Warehouse, lists of back issues of the Pen and Quill and much more.

Lycos Celebrity Addresses (http://peoplefind.lycos.com/lycos.lycos/celeb/celebrity.htm)--a search engine for celebrity addresses. Simply type in a name and a current address is displayed.

Authors on the Highway (http://www.bookwire.com/highway.authors) --a list of authors who are on booksigning tours, also listing dates and locations. Most of these bookstores allow for purchases of signed books through the mail.

U.S. Postal rates (http://www.usps.gov/consumer/rates.htm)--gives current postage rates. A list of similar web sites for postal unions of other countries may be found at http://ibis.ib.upu.org/AN/ServeursAdmin.html. Some of these web sites allow for the purchase of stamps from their respective countries.

National Archives Information Locator (http://www.nara.gov/nara/nail.html)--this site contains a search engine designed to help researchers find photographs in the National Archives. It is a great source of historical photographs which are perfect for matting and displaying with autographs. Information on ordering photographs is included.

Internet Movie Database (http://us.imdb.com/Movies/search.html)--a web site that contains an incredible amount of information on film history, including biographies of movie stars, film credits, plot summaries, and much more.

United Parcel Service (http://www.ups.com/)--allows tracking of packages mailed by UPS, so one can see exactly where an order from an autograph dealer is located at any given moment in transit! (A package tracker for the US Postal Service’s “Express Mail” can be found at http://www.usps.gov/cttgate/)

The Dead People Server (http://www.city-net.com/~lmann/dps/)--a tongue-in-cheek (but accurate) list of celebrities and whether they are alive or dead

Creating a personal web page is more difficult but is certainly an accomplishable task. A basic knowledge of HTML, the Web’s programming language, is needed but plenty of tutorials can be found on the Internet itself. Free computer space for web pages is often provided by Internet service providers as part of membership, but a growing number of online companies which are advertiser-supported will provide free web pages. An example is Geocities (http://www.oocities.org), which will provide several megabytes of memory for a web page for no charge, and will even provide online help with creating the page.

E- mail and mailing lists:

E-mail is “electronic mail,” which is text which is sent to another computer user with Internet access. With e-mail collectors send messages that are free and instantaneous to worldwide destinations. Indeed I have been fortunate to have carried on vast bodies of electronic correspondence among several collectors and fellow UACC members, including some with whom I’ve contacted daily for almost four years. The information exchanged has been invaluable to me in advancing my collection.

E-mail correspondence can have other uses. Some collectors have banded together to form e-mail mailing lists, which are clubs in which mail is sent to a common address and broadcast to all members of the group. This facilitates discussion among all members. Two such clubs are the E-Mail Autograph Club and the Autograph Collectors List. For information on EMAC go to this web site--http://members.aol.com/scottlewi/emac.html. To subscribe to ACL send an e-mail to majordomo@mailgate.wizvax.net with this text in the body of the message: subscribe acl youraddress@host.machine (substitute your personal information in the apporpriate places). These two groups have members of widely different levels of collecting and interest and content of the messages varies greatly.

Attachments may be included with e-mail messages. An example of an attachment is a scanned image of an autograph, or a file listing celebrity addresses. This fact enables collectors to send images of autographs to other collectors, and even allows potential buyers to preview autographs for sale.

Newsgroups:

Internet newsgroups (also called “usenet” or “usegroups”) are public bulletin boards in which people post messages of general interest to a group. There are two main newsgroups of significance to autograph collectors. The first is named alt.collecting.autographs (known to collectors affectionately as ACA) and is a general discussion forum. The second is alt.autographs.transactions and is an area to advertise autographs for sale.

These newsgroups have tremendously varied content and contain messages from collectors of all levels. Typical posts ask questions such as “what is the address for...?” or “how much is this worth?” There are also posts describing recent through-the-mail successes, booksignings and other autograph events, and web page announcements. However, posts are not limited to these subjects. For example, one of my favorite uses for the ACA newsgroup is to ask collectors from outside the United States to trade American stamps for stamps of their countries, so that my foreign autograph requests will have return postage included. Most queries are answered in a day or two, and posting to ACA is an excellent way to strike up a correspondence with another collector who shares your interests.

These are some of the basic means to access the Internet. Once a basic famililarity of using the Internet is established, it becomes a matter of exploration and imagination. The resources of the Internet are immense and includes information and services of considerable interest to serious collectors.

In the past I have found ample ways to use these resources to add to my personal collection and have established online alliances with other collectors to share the adventure of autograph collecting. Since the Internet is a rapidly progressive medium that literally changes on an hourly basis I anticipate the addition of many exciting features in the near future as more collectors are connected online. I am certain that we have only seen a tiny portion of what is soon to come.

Stephen Beck