New Member Intro: Austrian Empire, varieties & postmarks

Fascinating collecting area!

If you don't have it already, I highly recommend this book:

welcome to TSF!

Cheers
Stan
Northern California

Welcome from East Florida!

I collect Austria, too, learning more every day.

Thanks for the welcomes.
I'd like to start this thread by asking members whether they utilize computers in their collecting and how they use them. As my interest in Austrian postmarks increased and I got access to some cancellation catalogs (Mueller & Klein) I also got frustrated in identifying the town names so I set up an MS Excel database to help identify them, which works well. Since then the database has developed into a catalogue of the cancels I've got and helps me locate particular stamps where ever they reside, whether it be my cancellation stock-books (arranged in districts / province and alphabetically) or my specialist albums (sample available via drive.google.com/file/d/1fszp-LIuYAKkI3DmmOQCsNOODtIE55xf/view ). I have further developed an off shoot that limits itself to the postmarks I have and records the sub type and points value, all of which can be sorted, which makes it easy to use stamps for comparison purposes. I also find the use of Google / Wikipedia helpful in that it provides alternate language names and provides some background on the postmark place of origin.