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

[Tony Bogan]

Dean, Doug, Dave and others have all made the points I was going to. This has been an issue as long as I have been involved with VCF and was an issue long before I arrived!

Like others, I have a hard time destroying a book or manual to preserve it. I understand the need but it is still counterintuitive to rip apart something you’re “saving!” :-)

The single biggest issue is resources. Get the money for a scanner? Need the bodies to do the work. Get the bodies to do the work? Need the time from those bodies to do this massive undertaking. Get the time? Now you need to coordinate the time, place, bodies and material. Can’t have people just hanging out in the warehouse doing this. No bathroom facilities, gotta deal with food, no CO in the space so can’t have the public involved. Warehouse doesn’t have the room, electrical, cleanliness for this endeavor, so that means moving everything to a place that does.

It all comes down to logistics. Jason Perkins k owe this better than any of us, and I’m sure he can speak far more eloquently than I can on this issue. 

None of these things changes the need for this work to be done nor does it diminish the importance of the material and preserving it for the future. But that doesn’t mean VCF is in a position to do it, at least not at the moment. Perhaps getting the material to a person, persons or organization that can do it may be a better use of our limited resources.

Tony Bogan

Sent from my iPhone

> On May 13, 2022, at 11:35 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
> 
> On 5/13/22 22:32, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
>> Just a thank you for bringing it up.
>> It may yields some new ideas or rethink.
>> I'm one that values
>> this old material and do lament the chopping up of the originals
>> to get things scanned.  Maybe magazines that would wear and
>> fade but I've seen things destroyed that should not necessarily
>> been done.
>> Before I knew better, in the first year I was involved in
>> VCF, I assisted in an effort to scan some
>> remarkable Burroughs manuals- removing the pages from the
>> most amazing bindings, which were trashed, and sending the
>> beautiful pages to archive.org. Archive.org is awsome, and
>> the material belongs there, but there had to be a better way
>> for this particular set.
>> Lets keep talking about these issues.
> 
>  The goals of preserving the content vs. preserving the book are usually at odds.  It's not an easy judgment call to make.  We have a large but dormant (due to lack of volunteers) scanning operation at LSSM.  The best I've been able to come up with is that it's ok to destroy a book in order to preserve the content if other copies can be found.  But that doesn't seem to make it any easier.
> 
>           -Dave
> 
> -- 
> Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
> New Kensington, PA