Scanning Your Entry

Background

 When the Toowoomba Stamp Club was given the opportunity to host the National One-Frame Exhibition in 2021, we were faced with significant challenges because of the Covid pandemic. We realised that. however good our organisation might be, we could still be hit for six by border closures or lockdowns being applied the day before the Exhibition opened. So we had to have a Plan B, which we decided would be to hold a Virtual Exhibition - with no physical exhibits in the hall, but all available online.

Planning continued for both a physical and virtual exhibition, but when Queensland again closed its borders a couple of months out, we went to Plan B. It would be a virtual-only exhibition. And it turned into a great success.

While Covid restrictions are now a thing of the past, the success of Toowoomba 2021 has encouraged us to continue the virtual format for Toowoomba 2024, this time running alongside the physical exhibition. We hope all our exhibitors will support our efforts.

Our Plan

 We plan to launch our on-line display of exhibits following the announcement of awards at the Palmares Dinner, and leave it online until 30 April 2025. We encourage all exhibitors to support this display by submitting scans of the pages in each exhibit, because the advantages for everyone concerned are enormous.

Advantages for Exhibitors
  • your exhibit can be viewed worldwide, rather than only being available to those attending the Exhibition. This has the potential to make new contacts in your area of interest.
  • you know the judges can enthuse over your extremely rare "fly-speck" variety, which might not be possible when viewing a mounted exhibit in the Exhibition hall.

Advantages for Judges

 The judges at Toowoomba 2021 were very pleased with the ease with which judging could be carried out. Such judging has a number of advantages:
  • judging can be carried out from the comfort of the judge's home, and at a time convenient to themselves.
  • judges have their personal reference library on hand, if required
  • judging does not have to be rushed, to fit into a small window prior to the exhibition opening. A judge can spend literally hours on one exhibit, without disrupting the overall schedule.
  • judges have the ability to zoom in on a particular item, enabling detailed viewing which would be impossible when judging onsite.
  • judges have the ability to consult an expert in a particular field, and to discuss a particular aspect of an exhibit while they view it concurrently, even if the expert is on the other side of the world.

Advantages for Remote Collectors

 Who among us has never looked at a list of award winners from an exhibition held on the other side of the world and thought "Gee, I wish I could see that exhibit"? By leaving your exhibit online for six months, you give collectors worldwide the opportunity to view an otherwise-inaccessible exhibit.

The Technicalities of Scanning

 We have kept the scanning and submission process to the simplest level possible, so that most exhibitors will have no difficulty in creating and submitting their scans. All exhibitors have now been sent precise instructions, which in simple terms are:

  • Scan each page at 300dpi resolution
  • Save each scan in .jpg format, with a file name in the format "entryxx_pnn.jpg" (where xx is the entry number and nn is the page number)
  • Submit all 16 pages via your personal Dropbox folder, details of which were advised in the scanning email of 26 August
If you have any double pages in your exhibit, they are numbered with 2 page numbers (eg "entryxx_p03-04.jpg"), which means the page number for the last page should always be 16, even though you will have 15 (or fewer) scans.