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Monday (2015-08-17) in Baltimore Area: Help Save 25,000 Dead-Tree Electronics Manuals

posted by takyon on Sunday August 16 2015, @08:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the take-a-look dept.

"gewg_" writes:

Hack-a-Day reports:

[Jason Scott of Textfiles.com] found 25,000 manuals for all kinds of electronic items. The collection goes back to the '30s. Jason wants to save them and the current owner of the collection needs the space.

[...] The plan is to arrive Monday morning, along with $900 of bankers boxes [that] an anonymous donor paid for and start putting these manuals into boxes. I am then going to rent a nearby (1 mile away) Storage Unit, using a rented truck from a nearby Truck Rental place (2 miles).

The warehouse is located in Finksburg, MD, about 30 miles northwest of Baltimore.

The more people who I can get to show up to the place during the day or early evening, the better. The more people who throw money at me via paypal (jason at textfiles dot com) so I can pay the $250/month storage unit fee until the end of the year (so this can get an appropriate home), the better.

There are duplicates of some items; Scott will keep only 1 copy of each item, with the rest going into a dumpster.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 16 2015, @09:09AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 16 2015, @09:09AM (#223476) Journal

    "with the rest going into a dumpster."

    There's this newfangled modern thingy, called "Ebay". If it is AT ALL possible to store all this stuff short term, then the dupes ought to be auctioned off on Ebay. At least, that's the route that I would take.

    Yes, of course only one person in two or ten million has the slightest interest in the workings of a Wactchahickey. But, that one person just might be willing to pay ten, or a hundred dollars, for that manual. Plus shipping, of course. Don't gouge hell out of people for shipping, but set shipping a little high, to pay for some of the cost of cataloging, storage, etc. (by "gouge hell out of people" I mean those offers of a ten dollar item for only eight dollars, but the shipping is $100)

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by SomeGuy on Sunday August 16 2015, @09:48AM

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Sunday August 16 2015, @09:48AM (#223481)

    These manuals were already for sale via the Manuals Plus web site. That is what the company did. There obviously weren't enough people interested before to keep the company in business.

    A "going out of business sale" or a buyout would have been nice, but often situations change too fast to do things the ideal way.

    It really is too bad because often the ability to use or maintain older or vintage equipment can hinge on the availability of a manual.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 16 2015, @09:55AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 16 2015, @09:55AM (#223484) Journal

      Ahhh - got it. Well - sometimes, you've just got to clean house.

    • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Sunday August 16 2015, @11:28AM

      by zocalo (302) on Sunday August 16 2015, @11:28AM (#223507)
      It might still be worth proactively reaching out to various computing related museums around the world and see if they might be interested in any of the spares on an optional donation + P&P basis rather than just consigning them to the dumpster (which I hope is going to the local paper recycling plant, btw!). There's always a chance they might be prompted into action by the thought of something being destroyed:

      American Computer Museum [compustory.com]
      Computer History Museum [computerhistory.org]
      Living Computer Museum [livingcomputermuseum.org]
      National Museum of Computing (AKA Bletchley Park) [tnmoc.org]
      UK Computer Museum [computinghistory.org.uk]
      ...

      The worst they can do is say "no".
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2015, @01:36PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2015, @01:36PM (#223514)

        Meow