28th September 2013, 06:23 PM
I can think of any number of inexpensive (or free) reserach projects that a society could be pointed in the direction of with relatively little professional input - sadly they're in an area without a sufficiently local society, but the principle stands in a wider sphere, there's tons of stuff the amatuer sector could be doing, both fieldwork and research, the amount of old stuff that needs sorting out and putting in the public domain is phenomenal and most soc members these days will have a PC and access to the internet - all they need is pointing in the right direction