Creative Computing Magazine

Putting them on github would be really cool.

I too would like to know of a modern equivalent.

Magazines are able to deliver something that blogs often can't - like pieces of work that have been refined, and then refined again by an editor. Or diverse topics that still fall within a certain discipline.

This is an itch that blogs can't seem to scratch for me.

Libraries are underfunded. Climate controlled storage for stuff that most people won't use is expensive. There are some libraries the do keep everything, so it's not "lost".

I don't like deletion very much either in general, although I've seen librarians defend themselves with 1. that they totally don't have room for stuff 2. for kids' stuff, at least, if it's science, our knowledge has grown so much that it's a disservice for them to read the old book without context. Or if it's fiction, it can be full of social norms and beliefs that we've grown beyond, where...we'd also want them to have context if they were going to read it.

But it sucks when you hear how they often don't have a good sense of the value (intellectual or otherwise) of what they cull. And it sucks if everyone makes the same judgment and all throw away our ephemera that we wish to look back, evoke memories, reveal something of our time.

The much bigger problem is that copyright doesn't allow people to scan books/magazins and distribute the scans. As DanBC writes "Climate controlled storage [...] is expensive". On the other hand: Disk space is very cheap (even if you want high redundancy).

Easy, there. Librarians aren't the bad guys in this story.

Please see http://awfullibrarybooks.net/why-weed/ for a justification of why a library might reduce its collections.

wow. did you get shushed by a librarian as a child?

Librarians are not power mad media moguls. Librarians and Libraries are closest the non-IT world has to open source/free software/knowledge sharing. They have always been a fantastic resource for the "peasants" as you call them.

While there may be some power-mad librarians out there in terms of 'there will be silence in the library!', they curate the library's collection for many reasons: to meet the requirements of stakeholders, to meet the needs and shifting interests of the community, to make room for new material...

Really, there are a whole host of reasons for deaccession of library materials that include financial, space, and other concerns that hit the bottom line.

The great thing about technology is we have the ability to collect, classify, add metadata[1], and make all human knowledge accessible to everyone. If only insanely long copyrights and restrictions on scanning and lending copyrighted works were not in the way.

[1] This is not really something a busy librarian has time for, so other methods, such as user-driven tagging and folksonomies[2] are an interesting solution that is being tried.

[2] http://interactivearchivist.archivists.org/technologies/tagg...

Every librarian I've ever spoken to has been incredibly good at pointing me in the right direction if they didn't have anything in the local library. They understand the need for archival, but they are also limited in space and money and need to focus on what their typical users actually read.

If you can't find something, ask your librarian where it might be available. Generally they can give suggestions, and may even spend time helping you search.

In my teens had libraries contact specialist libraries and dig obscure translations of works out of vaults for me where they could have just told me sorry and pointed me to the several newer/more mainstream editions of the same work they had out (I was transcribing some books where the newer translations were still in copyright and where I was also hunting for additional forewords), despite being young enough at the time that they could've easily dismissed me as not having any "important" reasons to trouble them with asking for just those editions.

My experience is that if you're nice, most librarians love it when they are asked for something unusual by someone who clearly cares about the books.

As a librarian using my summer weeding, I can tell you that that is not the case. Having a large, irrelevant, unruly collection is a great way to make a library useless for the users. A library is not an archive. Other collections take care of long term storage. Primarily national libraries through legal deposits.

Edit: Worldcat shows 570 libraries have the magazine in their collection, and every library worth its salt can get it from them by inter library loan. So its not hard to get your hands on by a long shot.

Ah, tried MuPDF just now and it's still coming out dark gray, but at least now I know it's not a problem with Foxit. Thanks.