By TONY WEBB: --- Reflections on publishing and preserving our research:- FACING some significant health issues recently has caused me to ponder on how to preserve my 10 years of speedway research and accumulated archives. The kids are definitely not interested! To do this I need to reflect on how I got into this and what I have achieved! So let me back track. Up to 1982 when I moved back to Perth, my life was 100 per cent speedway, seven tracks to service, over 500 speedway customers, left little time for anything. My sons were pro bike riders which became my interest for the next 12 years. I then went into the book trade with www abe,com and a shop in Bindoon WA .I had on display a number of speedway photos including a photo of Aub Lawson.’ One day a tourist came in and said, I was Aub’s secretary, do you have any speedway books?” .That is how it all started. A call to Eddie Toogood in England soon had a consignment of speedway books on the shelves. My first venture was reprinting the JAP manual with the permission of the copyright owners. Moving to Brisbane in 2005 I discovered the Syd Littlewood family were in the next suburb. His story was my first publication. My journey into speedway history started at that point. I spoke to Reg Fearman who advised me, You are living where there are a lot of speedway riders in retirement get out there and talk to them. Books on Keith Cox, Bluey Scott, Garry Middleton, Keith Ryan and Garry Hay came from that advice for which I am eternally grateful as great friendships have grown from those projects. And that is what it is all about.. However, when I searched the 800 plus books on speedway, there were few that could give me a chronological and easily referenced records. facts and figures. Except for works by Peter Oakes, Martin Rogers John Chaplin, John Hyam, Peter White. Jim Shepherd, Robert Bamford, Cyril May, Norman Jacobs, and Tony Loader. That is when I started compiling my infamous A-Z lists, on riders, tracks, deaths and companies with the help of John Williams and his extensive collection. With records then at my finger tips I embarked on my trio of history books on Davies Park, AJH, and Deagon. All accepted by well known historic publishers. I then received a call from the late great Jim Shepherd, one of the few Australian authors to have seriously published speedway history. Jim was interested in what I was doing, I visited him in his offices in Sydney. He gave his time freely and gave me sound advice, He became the mentor I was looking for. Publish he said, promote yourself, you are putting up the money, it is your work, do it with courage and conviction. If others want to challenge, they have the same chance to do it if they are financially committed. I heeded that advice. The second advice was do not have anything to do with internet forums! Do not waste your time posting material that will one day be lost. I did not heed the second part 100 per cent. Publishing has always been my hobby horse. I admit that there also has to be a commercial factor, that is my nature, if only to break even. This brings me to where I am this rainy Sunday morning in Brisbane. Tomorrow (August 25 2014) I have to make some decisions. What have been my achievements? My greatest joy is in the simple fact we got the Hunting family to reveal their archives, no one else had achieved that and eventually get a plaque in place at Davies Park. The second is the friendships and social activities I now enjoy with some of the icons of speedway. My single biggest disappointment is that despite several attempts to bring speedway historians together in a face-to-face forum on the lines of established historical societies I have failed. Thirty folk attended our VSCQ coffee morning in Brisbane, not one historian. Like wise the apathy over the 2014 Ekka reunion. Several meet the author library presentations have been well attended but only one speedway historian has ever turned up. That aside, my worry is the knowledge that reams of research gathered by speedway enthusiasts has found its way to the tip has rang warning bells with me. What happened to the work of Ted Dexter, Bill Lawler, Denys Jones, Ernie Hancock, Don Gray, Ivan Baxter, and many others ? Many historians spend years on their research and do not spend the extra few dollars to preserve it in print They are content to post their work on web sites that vanish into thin air. With the exception of OTS we have lost most of our good speedway forums and subsequent loss of data. In my opinion social media such as Facebook is not working for the true speedway historian, but then we may be a dying breed. Although the membership of OTS has trebled, the amount of feedback on postings has failed. Facebook Old Time Speedway has become a picture gallery. I do give credit is given to the few faithful who do respond to names on photos Well you might say what is my conclusion? Well I do have a plan of attack for myself. I have to have better time management. I intend to continue publishing my popular Speedway Workshop, but after the release of a small book on Ipswich QLD and the Comet man I will concentrating on encouraging other writers to publish through the University of the Third Age which I have attended over the last two years honing my writing skills. (1) The manuscripts of my 30 publications are to be lodged with a UK publisher to ensure they can be reprinted. (2) The files of my unpublished work will be lodged on Old Time Speedway (Yahoo! version) and another safe site as I consider it to be a safe haven. (3) The hard copies of all my correspondence, research etc will be lodged with the John Oxley collection at the State library in Brisbane. (4) My programmes, magazines, library and small items will be donated to a speedway museum, So far as I am concerned this is good housekeeping. Tony Webb, Brisbane, Queensland, August 2014. ::::: Photo shows Tony Webb at a speedway exhibition in Brisbane in 2012.
Posted on: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 10:44:46 +0000
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