Discussions with Mark Rowlinson, Tom Paul, Bob Crosby and others regarding establishing a collection of golf architectural materials past, present and future has been ongoing for a while now. I've had some discussions with a prominent archives and a separate institution that are willing to consider being a repository and point of dissemination for reference material on golf architecture. Of course, they want to know how the storage space and staff will be funded.
I know we all feel it is important to an understanding of the history of golf and will benefit clubs now and in the future if this material is made available with modern technology. We'd like to see collectors, historians, architects and clubs provide materials. Of course rights to the materials and compensation are among many needs to be considered. Funding the project so that staff can be paid, storage space commited and access allowed is key.
A number of us met Mark Rowlinson yesterday in Philadelphia after his visits in Northern California and Chicago. We spent some time talking about this. Tom and I have a meeting in early Feb with a group we feel is perfectly suited to handling the USA side of things. Let's keep the ideas flowing and try to formalize how we can get this idea to come about.
One of the methods to fund this endeavor might be a series of annual golf tournaments around the world.
How do the architects that participate here feel about their work being archived? How do collectors and historians feel about their efforts being centralized and made available to others?