Do DPS Your Way
Perspective is your unique spin on your little piece of the wide, wide world of philately. It’s how you arrange your material and knowledge into the final presentation using a fresh angle only you can create. It’s the realization of the dream, so stay as true to the dream as possible and you’ll be satisfied with the result.
If you’re doing this for the judges, and these days, digital philatelic studies are gaining a standing of their own, well, maybe you pay attention to the rules of philatelic literature judging found on the APS web site stamps.org/directories/dir_lit/litjudging.pdf. Additional resources for a DPS are the Mega-Event Digital Philatelic Study rules www.asdaonline.com/index.php?id=65 and various article in ‘The Philatelic Communicator‘, journal of the Writer’s Unit 30 www.wu30.org of the APS.
For the most part however, this is a very personal and creative exercise. Now is your chance. Organize your study in your fashion and get things done right!!
Effort
A project will absorb as many hours as you’re willing to put into it. If you’re like me, time gets away from you and before you know it – geez is it time for dinner already? I now limit my sittings at the computer screen in terms of minutes and my eyes thank me for it. (I cheat a little as I don’t limit the number of times I can sit there each day.) There are no rules that say I have to be on the computer every day, so I can build the study as suits me time-wise.
That said, you’ll likely put a reasonable amount of time into building your new study. At first it may appear to be an unending task and essentially, it could be, depending on what you wish to achieve – study or full blown philatelic reference. As I said earlier in Dream, Questions and Goal, choose your subject carefully so a useful result is possible. Any basic study can always be expanded by adding new discoveries to its content and depth to the support information making it ever more comprehensive.
Philatelic items, background text and support graphic.
Payoff
The real payoff is in the organization of your data. You’ll gain immediate access to the information, without looking through a bookshelf, and as you continue adding, the smaller bits of data won’t get lost. The effort will shine most brightly when you perform a search for a key word and let the document do the work for you.
A second and perhaps more personally beneficial payday occurs when someone you don’t know sees your study and contacts you with information you’ve either been unsuccessful in finding or didn’t know about. Sharing information is now possible with less effort than ever before. Digital documents are very portable and quite easily transmitted anywhere in the world via a quick e-mail message or posting to a web site.
How about sharing your information source with your friends, local club, specialty society or even at a national convention as a public presentation? Helping others expand their knowledge is also an honorable goal and perhaps a kindred heart may be found to boot.
The latest development on the DPS front is promotion of the medium by the Mega-Show in New York. Participating in a competition may be an option for your newly minted digital philatelic study.
As you’ve read this far, you’ve completed a portion of the planning process discussed above, so grab that notebook and start writing down those ideas. 
