Postal History in the Digital Landscape

By Rob May FRPSL

The Stuart Rossiter Trust is pleased to announce that the 2026 Memorial Lecture will be held at 5.00pm on Tuesday 15^th September at the home of the Royal Philatelic Society London, 15 Abchurch Lane, London, EC4N 7BW, when Rob May FRPSL will give a talk entitled
Postal History in the Digital Landscape.

This will cover the following points:
1) The dictionary definition of “Post” and consider the future of letter post. Is it soon to be as redundant as the stagecoach? The study of postal decline is a valid postal history topic.
2) Lack of digital preservation of contemporary electronic records (websites evolve and die, e-mails get deleted).
3) Is AI for good or ill?
4) Access to archives. The roles of philatelic societies and specialist libraries.
5) Finding aids and sources.
6) Preparing and marketing a digital publication.
7) Should on-line publications be freely available?
8) Promoting postal history on-line more widely. Is there a parallel interest with family history and genealogy?

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Rob May’s philatelic interests are African stamps and postal history, especially Nigeria and Cameroun in all their guises, with sideline interests in French Africa and air routes throughout Africa. Rob has been editor of the West Africa Study Circle journal, Cameo, since 2001 and also its publications officer. Since then, Cameo has been awarded gold medals at the ABPS stamp show and at Autumn Stampex. Rob is a writer, researcher and a library volunteer at the RPSL. After merging the National Philatelic Society library into the RPSL’s library, Rob was awarded the Royal Philatelic Society London medal in 2020. His recent project has been a two-volume book “Internal mail routes of Nigeria 1900-1960” volume 1 of which was published by the Stuart Rossiter Trust in 2003. It was awarded gold at Europhilex 2025 and shortlisted for the Crawford Medal. Volume 2 is a digital publication to be released in 2026. Whilst researching these books Rob has made regular visits to some of the major UK libraries and delved into the minefield that is on-line digital resources for researchers.

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The lecture will be followed by wine and light refreshments.

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Free admission is only by ticket on application to:
James Podger FRPSL at pee-j-aggie-boo@ntlworld.com.
Early application is advised.

The Stuart Rossiter Trust is a Charitable Trust (Registered Number 292076) which promotes research
into the history of the postal services and to support publication in this area to a high academic
standard. For more details, please visit www.rossitertrust.com