The Alpiner Biennials - Reminiscing Made Easier

The Alpiner, the club’s newsletter, was printed and delivered in hardcopy from 1979 through 2018. The costs for printing and mailing the newsletter were a large part of the yearly budget; therefore, the board decided to switch to an electronic newsletter sent via email starting in 2019. This move to an e-newsletter was a common trend among non-profit organizations and continues to this day.

A downside of this approach is that capturing newsletter content for archival purposes is challenging due to the ephemeral nature of email and the scattered links to content on the web. Therefore, our policy has been to generate a PDF version of each newsletter and make these digital files available to all members via the club website. You can find the collection by clicking on the “Alpiner Archive” link at the bottom of any page on our website. 

One of my duties is to maintain a hardcopy collection of the newsletters, so I periodically print the PDF versions out and put them on a shelf where they sit and collect dust.  For some reason, I got a bee in my bonnet about merging the PDFs together and have them professionally printed and bound, so they could look more official as they sit there on my shelf.  A byproduct of this project is that we now have PDF files for merged collections of Alpiners in biennial groups covering the years from 2019 through 2024.

These biennial volumes are redundant to the individual newsletter files, but I have found that bundled collections make for a more enjoyable browsing experience when I am in the mood for a bit of club-related reminiscing.  And so, I have added the biennials to the Alpiner Archive on the club website for your viewing pleasure.  The three-volume set covers the years 2019 through 2024:

  • The Alpiner Biennial 2019-2020

  • The Alpiner Biennial 2021-2022

  • The Alpiner Biennial 2023-2024

It is hoped that presenting the newsletters in this bundled format will be helpful and interesting to at least some of our club’s supporters and newsletter readers.

Check it out at www.issaquahalps.org/archive

Happy browsing and reminiscing!

 

The spiral-bound versions of the Alpiner Biennials from 2019 through 2024.

 
Tom Anderson