The Eclectic Lapidary is currently undergoing renovation.
We'll have new issues soon!
INDEX
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How The Eclectic Lapidary Came To Be
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The Eclectic Lapidary is truly a creation of the internet. It does not exist on paper anywhere...at least not yet. It grew from newsgroup and email conversations with the three godfathers of The Eclectic Lapidary: Vincent King, Mark Liccini and CJ
Lanese. We started with discussions on the rec.crafts.jewelry newsgroup on how to create a venue for exchanging more information and permitting gem and mineral related advertising without spam and junk mailings. Moving to private emails, we decided that
another newsgroup wasn't really the answer. Then, Peter W. Rowe stepped forward to become the largely unsung hero as moderator of rec.crafts.jewelry. He solved the spam and advertising problems, and the newsgroup is now a pleasure to visit and
use.
But something else happened too. When I discussed the original 4-way discussions with John Doppler, he came up with a new concept: create a lapidary ezine. Doppler is the creator of The Geckoplex, an interactive game site with over 10,000 members, and he
designs and hosts websites through DopplerFX.com. So when Doppler offered to design and host an ezine (after explaining what an electronic magazine was), and with Vince, Mark and CJ offering encouragement and support, I decided to do it.
Trying to develop the focus of The Eclectic Lapidary was difficult. I wanted a venue that would let me collect and share the knowledge, wisdom, and opinions of the diverse worlds of lapidary, mineralogy, gemology, jewelry and mining. But there were so
many more fascinating people and topics, that we stretched out and included folklore, internet activities, special lapidary related events, behind the scenes interviews, book reviews, adventure tales, desert photodocumentaries, and public information on
the planned expansion of an Army facility into 500 square miles of the Mojave Desert. And I wanted the 'zine to be open to new possibilities too.
What could one possibly call such a marvelous array except Eclectic! And so, we became The Eclectic Lapidary. Starting our second year, with over 3500 subscribers, we are opening the gates to the world by removing our password access. The original
intent was to protect the reader from the garbage postings of the spammers of the world in a number of planned interactive features. Jerry and Norma Dewbre with the Faceters Digest, and Hale Sweeney, with the Lapidary Digest, filled the need admirably,
and so we did not move ahead with plans for our own posting area. The password will only be used where direct input needs to be moderated, as in The Trading Post which offers free ads for trading lapidary related items.
And so here we are! The Eclectic Lapidary has moved to my own domain now, bovagems.com. We are planning an in-print version of the Eclectic Lapidary for 1998. The paper version will be designed for folks who are not on the internet yet, or who want to
relax and read away from the computer, or take a how-to article to the workbench. The subscription and advertising fees will be kept to reasonable levels. We're not planning to take over any existing magazine's role. We will continue evolving our own
tradition as The Eclectic Lapidary.
Here's to a New Year of Reading!
Carol J. Bova, Editor
Questions or comments are welcomed at editor@bovagems.com.
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Copyright, 1997 by Carol Bova
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