A New Gateway to the Stamp Hobby:
www.learnaboutstamps.com
Also available in pdf
format
There’s a new Internet destination for beginners, a welcoming
doorway for those who wish to explore the world of stamp, postmark,
and cover collecting: www.learnaboutstamps.com
The site is a finding guide, a gateway concisely offering links
to important information from many different sources via a single
unified hub. Think of it as a major metropolitan train station
— not a destination in itself, but a place where many routes
to a vast range of other destinations may be accessed.
Learn About Stamps is a collaborative effort of the American
Philatelic Society, the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, the
Philatelic Foundation, and the United States Postal Service, in
cooperation with the American Stamp Dealers Association and many
individuals in the philatelic community. It began as a project
of the NPM Council of Philatelists.
The table of contents at the Learn About Stamps home page presents
seven “chapters,” each offering answers to a particular
beginner question: What is stamp collecting?; What is postmark
and cover collecting?; How can I begin stamp collecting?; How
can I obtain stamps for my collection?; How do I find out more
about stamp collecting?; What do I need to know when it comes
time to dispose of my collection?; and How can I get more involved
in stamp collecting?
A single click on any one of these questions instantaneously
transports the visitor to a page with links to other websites
— more than 300 of them, in all — that answer the question,
as well as providing information on related needs and interests.
For example, click on Chapter III (“How can I begin stamp
collecting?”) and you are presented with a veritable smorgasbord
of 146 stamp websites addressing different aspects of that question
— from how to obtain, identify, arrange, store, and exhibit
your stamps, to what tools to acquire and how best to make use
of them as a budding collector.
The Learn About Stamps finding guide benefits all participants.
For the fledgling philatelist, whether age 8 to 80, it makes it
easy to get practical, intelligent answers to questions that frequently
frustrate newcomers to the stamp hobby. And for the organizations
behind the many different websites to which those questions are
directed, including Linn’s Stamp News, the APS, the NPM,
and many, many others, it brings new visitors who might otherwise
never have made the journey.
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