14 Apr, 2021
(edited)Edited by Trotter on 2021-4-14 4:11:39 PM UTC
Edited by Trotter on 2021-4-14 4:14:36 PM UTC
2021-4-14 3:56:28 PM UTC
Even if your not a member of the Tolkien Society, though zero reasons not to join, everyone now has access to the Society publication
Mallorn, through an initiative by Dr Luke Shelton, the current editor.
As a taster I suggest having a look at
Belladonna goes to a Party,
Belladonna is Vera Chapman, the founder of the Tolkien Society and at the party she asks a special guest to be President of the Society.
https://journals.tolkiensociety.org/mallorn/article/view/270This took place on the 27th June 1972 thanks to the invaluable
Chronology by Scull & Hammond
14 Apr, 2021
2021-4-14 4:42:00 PM UTC
Thanks for sharing. That's a fun piece.
15 Apr, 2021
2021-4-15 7:12:31 AM UTC
Good piece. I’m a member of the TS, mainly to receive Mallorn and, to a lesser extent, Amon Hen (which is more of a mixed bag). Why on Earth have they opened the Mallorn archives to everyone? Seems pretty self-defeating.
15 Apr, 2021
2021-4-15 11:18:36 AM UTC
Quicksilver wrote:
Good piece. I’m a member of the TS, mainly to receive Mallorn and, to a lesser extent, Amon Hen (which is more of a mixed bag). Why on Earth have they opened the Mallorn archives to everyone? Seems pretty self-defeating.
I think it is fantastic news and I doubt that it will effect membership negatively.
15 Apr, 2021
2021-4-15 3:02:07 PM UTC
Quicksilver wrote:
Good piece. I’m a member of the TS, mainly to receive Mallorn and, to a lesser extent, Amon Hen (which is more of a mixed bag). Why on Earth have they opened the Mallorn archives to everyone? Seems pretty self-defeating.
They do have a two year moratorium for open access, so only members can see the most recent issues.
I think open access will only serve to improve Tolkien scholarship in general, and will draw more people into the society in the long term.
15 Apr, 2021
2021-4-15 5:03:20 PM UTC
I think if you only buy membership for Mallorn you're hardly likely to be put off by having access restricted to a two-year lag. Those people, as Quicksilver alludes to, are just going to stop paying membership. Why would they stay? I'm not sure that many people join only for the latest Mallorn & AH though. I certainly don't. I see my membership as essentially supporting everything the TS does (which I broadly support), even if I don't personally use/benefit from them.
15 Apr, 2021
2021-4-15 6:06:02 PM UTC
My main motivation for joining was Mallorn and Amon Hen. It’s also nice to be able to participate in TS events - which has been made easier during lockdown as they are on line. Whilst it’s certainly nice to support TS’s broader objectives, that was not my motivation. Having said that, even if new Mallorn’s were available on line, I would remain a member as I like to receive a paper copy and it’s nice to belong to TS. But without Mallorn and Amon Hen, I doubt I would have joined in the first place.
15 Apr, 2021
2021-4-15 9:13:47 PM UTC
The Mythopoeic Society has done the same before. Their publications (like Mythlore) are also freely available online, without even a moratorium, if I'm not mistaken.
https://dc.swosu.edu/mythsoc/I'm a member of the TS, too. So I don't really benefit from this step but I find find it great. It makes Mallorn available to a wider public. In my opinion the situation is also not too different from before, once you're in your second membership year: you've already had access to all back issues in the first year and you still need to be a member if you want to read that one new issue per year directly after its publication (due to the moratorium).
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