[Sca-cooks] Cook's Symposium 2004 - Ideas to Comment On

[Stefan li Rous]

Iasmin replied with:
> Which is probably more what I would do as well but I've found that
> people use these kinds of lending libraries for a variety of uses.
Yep. That is why I tried to emphasis "personally".
> One woman wrote
> me privately and said that she was hoping to use the library to get 
> copies
> of a single particularly recipe from the Vehling, Edwards, and Flower &
> Rosenbaum translations of Apicius's work.
A good point. If I ever got busy and actually had some specific, 
ongoing research then I might also do something like this. If you knew 
what you were looking for then it wouldn't take very long to ascertain 
whether the library had that item, find it, and quickly make a copy of 
the specific section(s) needed.
>
> > Along this line, perhaps some good bibliographies or some listings of
> > available resources might be good things to have available, 
> especially
> > for the beginning cooks.
>
> Now that is an excellent idea and one I will report back to the other
> event staff as a possibility. Thankyou.
Well, I do know of a source for some bibliographies and reviews... ;-)
>
> > If you do come up with some interesting papers or feast
> > write-ups that folks  find useful, I would love to consider
> > them for the Florilegium provided I can get permission from
> > the authors. This might make them  available to those who
> > don't have the time to look through them at the event or who
> > live a long distance away and cannot attend.
>
> What if I were to see to it that your request for articles (or a formal
> request) made it into the event packet of information that we gave to
> each
> attendee? We did something similar last year when we hosted the event 
> by
> putting a flyer in that served as a call for articles from the Editor
> of the
> Midrealm's "Artes Draconis" A&S publication. Would that serve the same
> purpose as what you were looking for?
This would be wonderful. As would a request specifically to the class 
teachers. Class handouts, as well as A&S documentation can often be 
good possibilities for the Florilegium if they can stand alone without 
the class or A&S item. You might mention that my standard policy is 
that the copyright remains with the author and I will accept updates at 
any time. So a class handout can go online in that form and then later 
be replaced by a more formal article later. Also, there are no 
restrictions on publishing elsewhere, so an article first published in 
the Florilegium can later be submitted to TI (yes there has been at 
least one done in that order) or local newsletters.
>
> > I'm not sure what the advantage of this is over doing a
> > direct mail order from the Pepperer's Guild.
>
> Response time would be the biggest advantage. Admitted on the Guild's
> webpage is that they are cheap but not fast. They fill orders as they
> get
> them until they reach a certain mass or date and then ship them out.
> We'd be ensureing a specified delivery time.
The Pepperer's Guild would probably still beat this turnaround time. 
But there is this procrastination thing...It took me several years 
before I finally got around to ordering the Madrone Culinary Guild 
booklets.
>
> > It is perhaps riskier, but having some of the more unusual
> > spices on hand for folks to buy might be a good way to
> > introduce folks to these  spices. You might have some of
> > the beginning cooks make impulse buys after finding out
> > what they can do with these in the classes as the
> > Symposium.
>
> True enough and certainly valid. I don't know that this year we can 
> afford
> that risk. Perhaps in a future year as the annual symposium gets more
> popular? I'm not certain.
As a group, no. But you may be able to encourage someone else to take 
this on. Free enterprise and all that...Perhaps not charge them a 
merchant fee to help persuade them to put money up front and to come. 
They make some profit for their efforts and risk, you get some 
atmosphere and an additional reason for folks to come to your event and 
your participants get some unusual or difficult things to find at 
(hopefully) lower prices than if they pursued them on their own.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****