As regular readers of the Coll Magazine will be aware, the magazine's early days were never easy financially: revenue from sales and advertising was barely sufficient to cover printing costs and the magazine relied heavily on generous donations and fund raising efforts.

It is therefore very pleasing to report that those days now seem to be behind us: indeed, we are now in a position to consider what role a financially buoyant magazine committee can play in local events and institutions.

This successful plateau has been achieved in two main ways: fund raising events and the increased use of modern technology. This latter development has almost halved production costs and special credit must be given to Martin Lunghi who has spent many long hours at his word processor typing out not only all the articles and reports contained within these pages, but also those of the last three magazines. With the assistance of this machine, the entire magazine content, complete in format and layout, can be recorded on computer disc and sent to the printers. The printer can then print the material immediately thus avoiding the time-consuming and expensive task of typesetting.

The economic benefits of this approach have proved so valuable that this year, to reduce our dependence on Martin's machine and also to enable the editorial committee to share the typing workload, we decided to purchase our own computer and printer. This machine is now peripatetic, moving between the different homes of the editorial committee. We do hope however, that a permanent village-based home can be found for it, intending eventually that the computer might be available for the use of anyone who might need it during the six months of the year when it is not being used for the production of the magazine.

We would also like, from time to time, to give financial support to island institutions and events. We made our first gesture at Christmas 1991 when we paid for the pensioners Christmas lunch, an annual event at the school. We were unable to do this last Christmas as the Coll Association followed our initiative and pipped us to the post, but we hope to be able to continue this in future years. It is fitting that monies raised by the magazine committee should be put towards the benefit of the community of Coll and this shall certainly be our aim.

Readers of this edition of the magazine shall certainly get their money's worth this year: we have been overwhelmed by the number of articles received, all of them offering those fascinating insights into island life which help make this magazine so popular.