Although I have a large personal library of Chess Composition books, much more is needed when undertaking a long-running project of this kind. Of course, many people have helped in various ways over the years, but I would like to acknowledge especially the help provided by the following people and institutions, presented here in alphabetical order:

• John Beasley - expert librarian of the British Chess Problem Society. For details of this library (access to the actual library available to members only) follow this link to BCPS Library.
• Geoff Foster - an Australian composer with an interest in the history of chess problems. He has been useful in providing many problems from Australian sources, particularly The Brisbane Courier.
• George Jelliss - variant chess expert who designed and made available the chess piece GIFS from which the diagrams in Meson are built.
• Koninklijke Bibliotheek - The Royal Library in The Hague, Netherlands. Here is housed the extensive Bibliotheca Van der Linde - Niemeijeriana comprising many thousands of volumes. Access is for members only, but fees are very reasonable and the rewards very great. This is an outstanding chess resource.
• Michael McDowell - Vice President and 'unofficial historian' of the British Chess Problem Society. From Michael in the early days of the database came hundreds of British chess problems from the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly the works of Godfrey Heathcote, Percy Blake and the Warton Brothers.
• Dmitri Turevski – chess problem enthusiast and compiler of yacpdb (Yet Another Chess Problem Database), which contains a great number of chess problems. We have recently exchanged data and I am slowly, by program, applying the problems in yacpdb to Meson. All problems that come from Dmitri (or are in both databases) are flagged in Meson with a quotation entry of ‘yacpdb’.
• Paul Valois - past President of the British Chess Problem Society, who spends many hours in libraries abstracting chess problems from the chess columns of the British provincial newspapers of yesteryear. He then passes on his findings to me for inclusion in Meson. An example of Paul's work in this area is the chess column of The Tablet, which he abstracted to three notebooks and which I have now finished keying into Meson. He has also done the same with The Field and I am currently keying that into Meson. This selfless work by Paul helps make Meson unique among chess problem databases.

Having listed some of the people who have helped me, I should state that any errors in the database are my responsibility and that I would welcome advice of them so that they can be corrected. Thank you!