There is a commercial on television that promotes a saying: Change is good. Horse people aren’t known for their willingness to change, or to change quickly. However, we are quick to accept good ideas whose time has come. For most U.S. readers of The Horse, the addition of an electronic form of delivery for the magazine isn’t critical to receive information; the surface mail delivery here works well for the print magazine (although some of you are very computer literate and might enjoy downloading an entire issue and having it at your fingertips). For our readers who live outside the United States, postal delivery of a magazine can be slow and/or expensive. Therefore, we are introducing electronic delivery of The Horse. It will look exactly like the print edition–down to the photos, graphics, and advertisements–but you can download it onto your computer and have it available wherever you are without the postal service needing to track you down.

There also will be some additional “bells and whistles” that can be used with the electronic edition, including the ability to keyword search that issue or multiple downloaded issues, highlight text/photos, and click on links that take you to articles, ads, or further reading.

I would encourage you to see page 139 to find out how to try a free sample of the electronic delivery of the magazine (or visit www.TheHorse.com/electronicedition), then let us know what you think.

Another change is coming: In the near future, www.TheHorse.com will become a tiered access site. That means as a subscriber to the print or electronic edition, you have access to everything TheHorse.com has to offer, including 5,100-plus articles, the events calendar, glossary, identification forms, and more features coming soon. This total access gives you the ability to search by keyword, read summaries of all articles we’ve published on that topic, then read the full text of any articles you choose