More help for that nagging question: Now where did I see that article?

I’ve mentioned it before, but the past few years I’ve really focused my collecting efforts more on pulp fanzines and reference books than actual pulps (though that doesn’t mean I haven’t been buying pulps, too).

My filing cabinet is filled with zines and I have others stuffed in spaces on my bookcase. (Then there are several boxes of duplicates in the closet. I’ll try to remember to bring them to Doc Con again, if anyone is interested.)

Besides storage space, the real trouble with zines is tracking down which pulp zine that article about such–and–such appeared in. I remember reading it, and it was on the left–hand page, but which issue was it in?

The first thing I turn to is a nifty little booklet put together by James Van Hise: A Guide to the Fanzines ‘Pulp,’ ‘Xenophile,’ ‘Nemesis Inc.’ and ‘Golden Perils’.

It’s 16 pages plus covers, filled with brief descriptions of each issue  of the four zines it covers. The index material is collected in a paragraph for each issue, so it’s not as quick to scan for information as, say, how issue contents are organized on Phil Stephensen–Payne’s Galactic Central. But it’s still very useful.

Van Hise sells copies of the booklet often on eBay for around $15.

There’s a new reference available for Tom and Ginger Johnson’s Echoes fanzine.

Matt Moring over at Altus Press has posted The Echoes Index as a free PDF that you can download.

The index comes from information culled from Echoes by Tom Johnson, Mike Chomko, Bill Thom and the late Robert Sampson. The index is organized in a spreadsheet–like format, with columns for the name/subject, article title, issue number and the article’s page numbers.

It’s version 1.0 of the index, so Matt asks anyone who discovers a mistake to let him know so that he can update the index.

Meanwhile, I can see that I will be a terrific aid for finding that next article that I just can’t remember where I saw it.