TePaul,
Thanks for the thoughts. I do hope it goes somewhere constructive and that TMac thinks seriously of what to do with his material. I like the USGA repositiory idea and advice, but the way these things go, maybe he will donate it to OSU or something. It is his call.
I also agree that there are others on this site with lots of material and I probably should have expanded the title and scope to recognize and allow us to show our appreciation and support for all they have done, and encourage dissemination of such material.. Joe, Bradley Anderson and Phil Young are amongst those who we also a great debt for collecting material on specific subjects. I know I have left out a few others who have or are studying various gca's, locales, eras' etc.
I have enjoyed nearly every book on gca and gca history and have most in my collection (usually the cheaper reproductions) I wish I had time to do that kind of work and appreciate all the free labor that TMac and others put into is so I can shamelessly enjoy it!
Actually, in thinking about it, I wonder if TMac, in studying such a broad spectrum of gca history compared to a single subject author like Phil, may have inadvertantly created a monster for himself? Its an honest question as to whether snippets on the history of what appears to be hundreds or thousands of courses could easily be put into some kind of unified format, or whether he could just provide info to any course that is a subject of his research. Even then, perhaps some wouldn't want to rock the boat of their own history, as he has found out on a few occaisions!
And, it is not for me or us to tell Tom MacWood that he must do anything with his materials. As Ian suggests, I did email Tom privately to apologize and see if he might answer, but so far, no response. I completely understand.
So again, I apologize for not thinking entire premise of my thread idea through. This could have been so much better. Maybe someone else could formulate a recap thread of all those who have studied what so its not so polarizing.