The politics of volunteer organizations tends to get uglier after there gets to be money in it.
Preservation of things like this, ephemeral history, is important. Everybody recognizes that immediately: "hey what a good idea if someone would save that stuff". The actual doing gets harder.
i got a stack of 17 years of "PC magazine" somewhere; easy to find people who say "oo cool i'd love to look through those" but much harder to find anyone willing to come pick them up.
I just found my two remaining beloved PCMags in my boxes. They have such fond memories attached, but I'm thrilled that I don't have 17 years.
I understand the desire to keep years of magazines, but I'd worry that it becomes a personality trait at that point. And of course they take up way too much room. My newly-adopted Win98 PC is bad enough.
With a large (at least in kilograms) collection of vinyl and shellac records, I have looked into the 'what happens next (ie., what should my executor do)' issue.
The most memorable comment was in the blog of a buyer of collections. Can't find the link but paraphrased: "I will never even look at a collection that has had anyone else peruse and buy some discs. They bought your collection." As in, most 'collections' are really 'accumulations', the dealer will buy your accumulation and give you psychological cover that someone really values all of it, but keep the valuable stuff and bin the rest --- and first do an assay that there are indeed some gems in the ore.
Also, "If you recognize the performers, it's not of any value".
I see so many records at thrift shops that make me think "Crap, did I drop that off by mistake in my last move" that I have to concede that the fate of my collection will be the replacement of fossil fuels. As a classical listener and collector, I am nontheless moving to a (cynical?) assessment that a lot of those collections are "the music you were told you should enjoy".
Yep, it's heartbreaking. This thread makes me think about what the real goal should be, given that the material media is merely fuel. Maybe a short document about the things that I want to charge the beneficiaries with giving a listen to?
When I look at the IA terms-and-conditions, I do not see an outcome different from what the original article ('TFA', correct me!) was complaining about.
begin-quote>>
Items donated to the Internet Archive become the property of Internet Archive, and will be recorded as an unrestricted gift. Items are not returnable after donation. We can provide a donation receipt roughly describing the donation back that can be used for tax purposes– but we can not do an appraisal.
For materials that do not fit into our collections for any reason, they are often donated to other non-profits or worthy causes, but sometimes recycled. Rarely are materials sold.
<<<end-quote
So I see nothing in this to suggest anything more than that I can donate my collection in plastic totes, and expect the totes to be re-used.
I'm not complaining, but I am pointing out that expecting more than that isn't what's on offer. The IA and the VCF may need to be more explicit in saying that "giving us your trust means accepting our judgement".
Actually, I think the IA is explicit, just 'diplomatic'.
what is it you are trying to leave behind that could not be more portably replicated by a collection of flac files?
Personally ill be happy if my children would listen to some of the music i like and remember me. my collection will not mean anything to them, nor should it.
You are correct! Not a technology, I'd just give them a list (eg. Shostakovich Piano Cto 2), maybe in the when 'when you read this I am gone' letter, though I would like to make it happen before then, so we can talk! ... and yes, that means do some work now.
also consider (Grand)^n(children)
Ideas about how to leave a 'repertoire legacy' would merit a new thread!
Note that Vintage Computer Festivals refers to a specific festival held by the Vintage Computer Foundation (VCF). Jason isn't saying he will never go to any festival ever again.
I care about vintage computers and early computing history, because quite a few people I know are aware of this I am gifted old hardware and documentation. I have nowhere to set them up or display them so they go into storage.
I would willingly gift them to good homes, I feel my role is as a custodian. I cannot make use of these things, but I can ensure that they continue to exist.
I can completely sympathise with the anger that the author of this post feels. They were performing this custodial role and the expectation in passing to a new custodian is that they preserve the material or pass on to a new custodian. I'm sure if faced with the option of destruction or taking back the donation the author would have taken it back.
Just a heads up - Jason Scott, the author is the "Free Range Archivist" and software curator for archive.org. (see his other site textfiles.com for another great historical archive of content - that goes way back as well)
Can you imagine having been gifted this by one of the most popular (if not THE most popular) name online for archiving things and then just. Dumping it? No shit he's offended. Shame that orgs get screwed when quality members leave. They deserve to be called out for this publicly, and hopefully they learn their
'Lerc' comment speaks to the key thing here: there was a miscommunication:
Donor: I would like to charge you with care and control of this archival material.
Recipient: Thank you for the containers and fuel.
What happened then is in the past, no going back. The incident raises the bar for archive recipients ("is this an archive, what can we do with it").
Some archiving orgs now will not accept donations without a monetary donation to cover the archiving process. I have to say I agree with that, insofar as it filters out "I didn't discard it, I donated it to a museum".
I see no justification for this much benefitv of the doubt. Jason Scott is no rando. Vcf claim to be in the business of preserving such material, or at least recognizing that it should be. The material was topical, and all parties know each other.
Very clearly and with no ambiguity at all, it was vcf who totally failed at their task.
I don't define "their task" as simply "posess and operate an excellent document storage facility", but merely be minimally professional and responsible enough to avoid accepting material they are unable or unwilling to deal with, and if you do accept it and then change your mind, find someone else or go back to the doner, and suck it up until you can undo your mistake.
This is not a "miscommunication". The people involved and the context does not allow anyone to claim anything like that.
A random person didn't dump a truckload of random material on the front lawn of another random person unsolicited.
A famous vintage computer organization accepted a set of vintage computer documents from a famous archivist.
vcf accepted responsibility for the material, and then, I don't even know the right word, they didn't merely fail, that implies trying, what is failure to discharge a responsibility when you don't even try in the first place? What is the excuse for not even so much as iquiring if Jason could possibly just take it back? How much does an email cost?
As a former warehouse volunteer at VCF in Wall, NJ, I can attest that this blog post consists of only conjecture and no facts.
Everything was checked for archiving. Everything was offered to anyone who would listen for over a year. Most of the paper found a good home. In fact, a better home as the warehouse is near the ocean and has no climate control. Not a good place to donate paper. It should never have been donated and should never have been accepted (under previous management).
I was actually there. Nothing in this blog post is factual.
That's not conjecture. It could be false, but why would Jason Scott decide to lie about being told this? That just makes no sense. The best thing I can think of is that there was some severe communication breakdown, but if that's the case this is really not a good response, because it implies that Jason is intentionally just making shit up and I don't understand why anyone would assume that.
I am not saying anything regarding the papers having been tossed, and I would like to believe your version of the events where they were not. However, Jason having apparently been told the papers were tossed is fully 100% compatible with that also having not actually happened, and presumably you weren't the one to communicate with Jason in that situation, so how exactly do you know?
> As a former warehouse volunteer at VCF in Wall, NJ, I can attest that this blog post consists of only conjecture and no facts.
The single most important piece of information in the blog post is that he was told the materials were disposed of. That’s either true, or is a lie—I fail to see an interpretation of that that could be called “conjecture”.
So, the author did not donate magazines? The magazines were not disposed of? There were not many asserted facts in the post. Which exact ones were lies?
You lie! Yes, you were a former * volunteer * there, so you were only privy to certain things. I was the person * in charge * at the time, as Jason noted in his blog post.
>> It should never have been donated and should never have been accepted (under previous management).
I recall that you were too busy, in your volunteer days there, running your mouth and telling me how to do my job. Yet the problems VCF has now never happened under my watch.
Checked for archiving means that everything was checked to see if it was already archived. The collection was popular computer magazines that have long ago been archived. Nothing unique, which is likely why the donation was made in the first place. The blog post implies there was something unique about this donation. There was not. If you know anything about the work of the author of the blog post, you wouldn't even be able to imagine him placing something with historical value in a venue like the VCF warehouse. There was no historical value.
It just took up space that was ultimately used to save more important items, like actual computers, and was in a venue that was absolutely hostile to paper. So the paper found better homes. The statement that it was thrown away is factually incorrect. The implication that somehow history was lost is also incorrect.
> The statement that it was thrown away is factually incorrect.
I get coming on here to correct the record, but why the hostility toward the author when the factually incorrect statement was made to him by someone at VCF? Or are you suggesting he’s lying about what he was told?
Confusing a collection of "mostly IEEE-related but with a few other sets of titles" papers with a collection of "popular computer magazines that have long ago been archived," with "no historical value," seems like exactly the sort of mistake Jason Scott would not make.
Were you party to the review of the material or the disposition of it afterwards in your capacity as a warehouse volunteer?
I only ask because you seem to be relaying details with an air of authority but not engaging with important follow-up comments. The posted link mentions "mostly IEEE related" and "few other sets of titles" which I imagine all being behind the IEEE Digital Library paywall. Even if it's just Spectrum and maybe interesting SIG (Special Interest Group) publications, those being made available freely seems like a win? But this is all just my guessing and hope to find some clarification about what happened if we aren't supposed to take the posted link as fact.
A sad lesson on the ethics and goals of vintage collecting: are you responsible for stewarding everything you have, to your best ability, for the next generation? I'm sure we all think the answer is yes – but when putting that in practice, as in this case, it's easy to (self-interestedly) not think of all of the consequences. The same applies to turning old Macs into aquariums, etc.
Looking at the response from commenters who say they were affiliated with VCF and the amount of flagged comments here, I’m inclined to believe that it was indeed an insult.
Just a reminder that VCF's mission statement is literally "To preserve computing history through education, outreach, conservation, and restoration"[0]. It's pretty egregious that they would destroy such a large collection of material directly relevant to computing history.
It sounds like Jason invested a lot of time and care in making a donation of a large collection of possibly historic periodicals. He disagreed with the way the donation was handled, they apparently tossed them without much consideration and kept his plastic bins. So, he’s decided no longer to attend festivals.
Was the issue about disrespect, the loss of the periodicals, mismanagement, or a combination? It doesn’t say.
And how did it even come up that they were enjoying their continued use of his plastic bins? Did they think that would be consolation?!
I know this is only one side of the story, but based on his subjective experience here, I can’t say I blame the guy at all for feeling so insulted or being unwilling to accept an apology.
I have a storage room under the stairs which would be a vintage computer museum of its own. I am keeping it there until I downsize the house in the next 5 years. I have been delusionally waiting for that 10,000 year preservation origanization to come into existence but I am not holding my breath.
PS. I have a cache of ~10,000 1980s and 90s DIP ICs (8032 Micro controllers and support chips) that I want to find a use for.
You could contact me at my account name without the punctuation at gmail.
LCM's trouble was entirely caused by LCM not being completely spun off with an endowment prior to Paul Allen's untimely death and the inheritance of his estate by his sister Jody.
Jody Allen doesn't care about LCM, so she "shut it down" rather than continue paying for it, but apparently she can't completely shut it down--probably due to how its structure was set up when founded, at least Paul got that right--otherwise I expect she would.
In other words, the problem with LCM was pretty specific to the timing of Paul's death and the shiftiness of his sister, not anything to do with museums for this sort of thing as a class.
I don't think your assumption is correct based on this sentence: "I also want to take this moment to clearly state that Evan Koblentz, the director of the Vintage Computer Federation for many years, who took the original donation, had absolutely no say or part in this pulping of historical magazines, having been driven out of the organization years before."
> "Well, it never should have been accepted in the first place. But literally everything was being accepted at the time. Finite space combined with salt water air was the culprit after the original poor planning."
It seems that the donation was split up by allowing others take what they wanted. (no reports on what happened to the rest)
> "And whoever told you they were thrown away was misinformed and not involved. There were cycles over and over again of allowing people to save anything they could carry. So it was split up, but mostly found good (not salt water rich) homes."
Note: Not taking sides - just stating what I read on Twitter/X/Whatever its called these days!
Well, that's better than all them being pulped. But not that much better, if it's all been split up and sent to private collections. I am pretty sure, knowing Jason Scott, that his intent was that this collection should be available to the public in some way, and not split up and effectively hidden.
That's pure speculation. There's no reason to assume he randomly dropped off a ton of containers full of stuff without having prior communication/arrangement with them, or at the very least, an acknowledgement/acceptance of the material when he arrived.
It definitely does not sound like that. What a strange interpretation. Who would spend hundreds of dollars and hours of time just to do an unsolicited drop?
I'll take the L, without context and just reading the blog there wasn't any hint at coordination with the receiving party (besides the donation being accepted I suppose)
Speaking from experience tho people clearing out storage containers sometimes do strange things
Jason is an (the?) official archivist of archive.org. He's not just some dude grabbing spare containers of junk and dumping them. He knows what he's doing. :) hopefully this puts him on your radar. He's the one who was behind the software archive of old DOS programs and getting them running in emulation in the browser. Dude is super cool (he can be a curmudgeon at times, but what he DOES is cool).
I mean if the donation is unwanted, it is possible to deny it (you could even go the "we only want the containers" route). Or if the decision comes at a later point in time, one could ask the donor if he wants the stuff back (once again, possibly accompanied by "but we'd like to keep the containers").
Preservation of things like this, ephemeral history, is important. Everybody recognizes that immediately: "hey what a good idea if someone would save that stuff". The actual doing gets harder.
i got a stack of 17 years of "PC magazine" somewhere; easy to find people who say "oo cool i'd love to look through those" but much harder to find anyone willing to come pick them up.