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 Mineral collectors have always had a critical need for information and news about the minerals they collect. Books are useful as “static” references, of course, but mineral periodicals represent an ongoing flow of new data, information on new discoveries, discussions, controversies, and dealer sources. Professional journals today concentrate solely on technical research, but the magazines aimed at “amateurs” contain a wealth of valuable information and specimen photography specifically of use to the collector (and curatorial) community. New specimen discoveries, show news, biographies of collectors, featured collections illustrated, and articles on mineral localities large and small, old and new, famous and obscure—all of these features keep collectors in contact with their community of enthusiasts, and augment and magnify the enjoyment that mineral collectors get from their own collections while aiding them in growing those collections. In addition, as these periodicals accumulate on one’s shelves, they become a valuable historical and locality resource well beyond individual books, and are indispensable to the serious mineral collector of today, just as they were when mineral journals first appeared in the late 1700s.

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