My favorite hobby is Model Railroading and my second favorite hobby is Woodworking. I suppose my third favorite hobby is reading which ties these together. I subscribe to numerous magazines for both hobbies. I also save the magazines after I have read them
The railroading magazines contain many articles pertaining to prototype railroads, layout building and design as well as articles showing what other modelers have done.
The woodworking magazines have reviews on tools, woodworking plans, and general tips and techniques.
I now have over 2000 magazines saved.
I thought about scanning the magazines and saving them as PDF files, but after after scanning about 50 magazines and then calculating the time it would take I decided that there has to be a better way. (BTW, each magazine is between 80 and 150 pages; You can do the math...)
I also thought about cutting out the articles that I would want to keep. These could then be organized in a filing cabinet with a customized filing system. I started down the path of creating the filing system for Model Railroading but realized that this option had two flaws. First, I would rather not cut up the magazine. These magazines can be sold on ebay for about half price. There are thousands of dollars of magazines here. Secondly, I would probably have to save all articles because how would I know if I would want to refer to an article or not in five years or so.
So now I am at a loss as to what to do with these magazines. I am in the process of bundling them by year and placing them in storage containers that will be moved into our off-site storage area. This is only a temporary solution though. Any suggestions would be appreciated.