We are a small but growing community, starting to build the de-facto online archive of magazines and covers. We are pulling information from multiple sources and trying to make sure the information for each magazine is accurate.
Obviously this is just a start, but we are counting on the user community to add more mag issues. We are currently at more than 15,000 issues.
Our objective is to reach 50,000 by the end of the year.
If you want to be part of this, simply log on, and add magazine issues that comprise your collection but cannot find in the Kaastor database.
Enjoy!
Archive
Kaastor is a community-built database of magazines. Registered members are able to insert and update information about magazine categories, issues covers.
There are two types of forms where members can enter new data:
- Categories (‘MAD’, ‘Colliers’ or ‘Rolling Stone’)
- Magazines (‘MAD #0110’, ‘Colliers 1907-04’ or ‘Rolling Stone #1001’ )
Let’s say you own an issue of Rolling Stone that currently doesn’t exist in the Kaastor database. You will enter a ‘new magazine’ from here. Now if you want to enter an issue of a magazine and you can’t even find a single issue of that magazine type in Kaastor, well, chances are we are missing the entire category and you are also welcome to create it here!
Categories require a few fields, including country or region of release (as in US, Latin America), category title and parent category. Parent categories help Kaastor organize magazines by genre. Selecting the parent category can be a tricky enterprise as it is a subjective attribute, but we hope that the self-regulating nature of the portal will correct mistakes.
When you add a new magazine you have to make sure that the category exists and only then you should fill out the rest of the data. We really welcome those pictures, but they are not a mandatory piece of the data entry process.
After adding a magazine it will become part of your draft collection available here and once a moderator approves that issue, it will become part of your submitted items list available here
What’s in it for me?
Once you added a new magazine and category, those contributions will engross your personal lists (magazine and category submissions and drafts). We hope you take some pride in that, but we also think there should be an additional reward for contributing to this process. A percentage of the commissions that Kaastor earns on any future sales of a particular magazine will go to the member that submitted it. In a way, contributing members become stakeholders.
This is a bold move and differs entirely from the philosophy of the few community-built portals for collectors that exist out there.
Also, keep in mind that if you are seller, you can only list an item for sale if it already exists in the database (and has been approved by a moderator).
The process
As always in life, there are certain procedures to follow, but this one is very simple:
1. Create a user account here if you don’t have one
2. Add a new magazine
3. Add a new category
4. The “Update” links at the right hand side of a magazine or category allow you to update those
5. As soon as you add a magazine it can be viewed by any member, but they will only be accessible for the general public once the magazine has been published (approved by a moderator).
http://kaastor.com
