Bill Dud.'s post about donating his copy of "The Chip" reminded me that I've been meaning to share some good news. Jeff Galinat and I are going to do some things in the museum tomorrow, which will probably include putting up wooden bookshelves. Most of our library is in boxes in the warehouse. This is non-ideal because of climate (no HVAC) and difficulty of access. The new shelves will only hold a tiny portion of our library. Our plan is to use the shelves for our most important material. "Most important" as I see it means three main categories: historic books, historic magazines, and product manuals. What follows is a good news / bad news situation. As you read it, please keep in mind that WE'RE DOING THE BEST WE CAN WITH THE AVAILABLE RESOURCES. Sorry to shout :) but I want everyone to understand that there are topics beyond our control -- finite space, funds, etc. The good news: 1. Our most-historic books are already mostly sorted because they were boxed up when we vacated the old museum space. The most effective way to determine "most historic" is by publishing date. Thus, we previously sorted these books by 1950s, 1960s, etc., and we'll put the oldest ones on the new shelves first. We'll put as many as we can there until we run out of space. Obviously there are plenty of historic books from the 1970s and newer, but reality dictates that we're working with a blunt object not a scalpel. Two exceptions come to mind: 1., our complete-ish collection of the 1970s "Cookbook" series, and 2., our collection of DEC handbooks -- both groups are already sorted from the old museum so we'll make room for them if at all possible. 2. The vast majority of our most-important magazines are also already sorted and already in the museum (on a long shelf under the workbench). We'll move them to the new bookshelves and use the shelf under the bench for practical things. This collection includes Vol. 1, issue 1, until December 1979 of Byte, Creative Computing, DDJ, Interface Age, Kilobaud, SCCS Interface, and a couple of others I'm forgetting right now. It also includes the first several years of the ACGNJ newsletter, a full run of the (insanely rare!) People's Computer Company newsletter, a binder containing the full run of the Amateur Computer Society newsletter, and the first six years' anthology books of the West Coast Computer Faire (or maybe that's all the years? I an not sure how many anthologies they published). 3. Various manuals for systems in the museum are already on a shelf above the workbench. The bad news: The overwhelming majority of our technical books and product manuals will remain boxed up in the warehouse. We simply don't have the people, time, space, or money to change that right now.