[vcf-midatlantic] An idea for preservation and a proposal for the future of the VCF's library of written media.

Dean Notarnicola dnotarnicola at gmail.com
Fri May 13 14:08:38 UTC 2022


It’s a great idea, but the question of funding and manpower come
immediately to mind. As it stands, we have a great resource in Jason Scott
at Archive.org, whom we can send things we believe are not yet archived.  I
love that VCF has a reference library that visitors should be able to
access, but I think that professional archiving of media best left to those
who already have the time, inclination and proper equipment.




On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 9:58 AM Lou via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

> Hello all, I don't speak much on here often enough but I have been on the
> list and in the community for a little while now. Something came to mind
> the other night when I was doing research on preservation of physical book
> printed/written media and came to find not only several different kinds of
> methods and businesses that can scan these forms of media to a digital form
> but there are also scanners that exist which can do this job well without
> it being destructive to the books. The issue of course is that these
> scanners are by no means cheap for the average small scale user wanting to
> preserve a few of his books/manuals and some of the services out there that
> can offer this are either not much cheaper and/or only offer the
> destructive method of scanning this media (I.E. unbinding books to scan
> individual pages).
>
> After some time thinking about this, hearing some colleges and old
> libraries/research facilities having these for their own preservation
> efforts a thought came to mind...Why shouldn't the VCF have one for their
> own preservation efforts as well?
>
> The idea is simple enough, an investment in a non-destructive book scanner
> for the VCF which can be used to back up the existing library of physical
> written media, manuals, history, research, and more which can be put into
> digital form and be accessible to anyone who needs it without difficulty.
> It can help many countless individuals in the community who would need that
> information but isn't uploaded or documented anywhere else. A form of
> digital preservation and online library could be a great benefit to
> everyone.
>
> Finally, a further benefit is those who have their own materials they wish
> to preserve as well could do so with a suggested donation to the museum as
> well. It can be a service for other collectors who want to preserve their
> media as well and could even be added to the main library! Hosting of these
> materials could also be done and uploaded to archive.org to shoulder off
> the need of hosting our own site (unless desired of the community). It's a
> benefit with no real downside to the museum or the community at large.
>
> I know there will be some finer details to discuss and some minor issues
> that might come to light (especially anything involving possible copyright)
> but aside from this it can be a useful service for everyone. I just wanted
> to bring this idea forward to see what everyone thinks of it.
>
> Thanks for reading this out!
>
> -Lou
>


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