3

I am taking advantage of lockdown(s) and scanning/imaging all old media to archive.org, but would like to donate the boxes when finished.

A bit like Donating old Computer Shopper Magazines

The Centre for Computing history say they want a list so they can choose. I'd rather just give it all away in one go, is there anywhere in the UK ? Old Computer media might be too specific a subject for a local library. I also realise some of the media maybe corrupted by now.

D.Price
  • 41
  • 3
  • 1
    Generally speaking, any serious historical collection is going to want to choose what they think meaningful, rather than take a box of miscellaneous stuff. – dave Nov 04 '20 at 14:09
  • 2
    Can't speak for UK institutions specifically, but museums, libraries, etc. are generally short on space, short on manpower, and (the root cause) short on money. So they'll try to focus their efforts items of a certain historical siginificance, especially if scans / images are already available online. – Michael Graf Nov 04 '20 at 14:52
  • @another-dave that's too bad, because this is how places like that miss out on things they're looking for. Donors who are purging, and don't have the time to catalog and sort and cherry pick, so they want to donate the whole thing. And if they can't donate the whole thing, then more times than not, the "whole thing" ends up in a dumpster and landfill. Wheres these organizations of informed enthusiats know what they're looking for and a better entrance in to the disposal chain, and ideally without the time limits that the donor are under. – Will Hartung Nov 04 '20 at 14:58
  • @WillHartung Exactly. If you want the rare stuff. Make it easy to donate. Otherwise Peoples other halfs will persuade them to throw out the lot including possible Rare items. Plenty of news articles highlighting this & we are not the experts, esp. if we inherit it. On the other hand I understand that they will not have the resources to store or process it, hence a question to see if there is any out there that can. – D.Price Nov 04 '20 at 15:32
  • With magazines and other printed media in particular, I can see several reasons why interest might be low: first, there's already guaranteed to be a hard copy at the British Library, through legal deposit (cf https://www.bl.uk/legal-deposit), so the risk something will be lost forever is pretty low; second, there's likely a scanned copy online, so people looking for something will use that rather than look it up at a museum or library; and third, magazines and books generally don't make for good exhibits (rare old books excluded). – Michael Graf Nov 04 '20 at 22:07
  • For information, see the note about 'historical papers' on the CCS web site. I'm not sure what you've got, but they're not interested in copies of Computer Shopper. – dave Nov 05 '20 at 00:07
  • I looked around off and on for about 5 years. I had about 15 years of byte magazine including technical supplements. Eventually found a site on UK EBay but this guy had advertised it for a few years and couldn't shift it. There were also sites which had scanned versions of every copy I had. I also had two folders of Commodore PC mags from the 70s, 5 folders of RMX286 manuals and about 2ft of Xenix manuals. Nobody seemed interested. I just kept a few and recycled the rest. Heartbreaking but it cleared out an enormous amount of shelf space. – cup Nov 05 '20 at 07:58
  • Most media available online is either not there or very low quality. The British Library is a good resource to check what is available BUT despite legal-deposit the online search seems to show that they do not have every issue from the main stream publications. Thank you for all these links to information. I will endevour to continue to scan/image everything to one place which in itself is a list which I can then give to museums/library's to choose what they want – D.Price Nov 05 '20 at 09:08
  • It looks like, from the answer, you have got lucky, but as a general rule, I don't think it's a good idea to treat museums with the same respect as the local dump. It looks a bit like you just want to get rid of some rubbish and push the work of sorting out the good stuff onto somebody else. Looking at it from their point of view, they might resent that. – JeremyP Nov 10 '20 at 11:15
  • @WillHartung Because the donor's time is more valuable than the time of the overworked and underpaid museum staff. Right? – JeremyP Nov 10 '20 at 11:17
  • @JeremyP Yes. Perhaps you don't understand the time pressures that folks in this situation (not necessarily the OP) are in. When folks purge stuff, it's typically not a methodical, incremental process. Something triggers it. Death in the family, a house move, etc. where what was once an abundant storage is now something on the clock and vanishing soon. The reason much of this stuff is lost is simply because of neglect and time lost. Goodwill et al succeed because they ingest unsorted items that would otherwise go to the landfill, and then process and resell it. Their time is the added value. – Will Hartung Nov 10 '20 at 14:48
  • @WillHartung Perhaps you don't understand the pressures museum staff are under or how worthless most of the stuff is. In any event D. Price is not doing a house clearance, he is scanning his own material. – JeremyP Nov 12 '20 at 11:52
  • Yes, I was trying to get information as to what should be done. I understand now that one should catalogue for them. Which as I am archiving at IA will be done automagically as I just have to point them to the uploaader and they can see everything. I certainly was not trying to disrespect the excellent work the museum staff do, just finding out what is the best way, and I think I have found it. – D.Price Nov 17 '20 at 15:18

1 Answers1

6

We are a computer museum here in the Northwest, we were going to open up in August but unfortunately have had to push it forward because of the Covid. We are looking for magazines to put into our museum and also in the Internet Cafe. We would love to take them for our museum which is called Northwest Computer Museum/Workshops in Leigh. Website is www.nwcomputermuseum.org.uk and my email address is joe@nwcomputermuseum.org.uk.

tripleee
  • 134
  • 7
Joseph Kay
  • 76
  • 2