I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
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Preservation of things like this, ephemeral history, is important. Everybody recognizes that immediately: "hey what a good idea if someone would save that stuff". The actual doing gets harder.
i got a stack of 17 years of "PC magazine" somewhere; easy to find people who say "oo cool i'd love to look through those" but much harder to find anyone willing to come pick them up.
I understand the desire to keep years of magazines, but I'd worry that it becomes a personality trait at that point. And of course they take up way too much room. My newly-adopted Win98 PC is bad enough.
I was sixteen when I got them in the mail. Such a shameless geek.
The most memorable comment was in the blog of a buyer of collections. Can't find the link but paraphrased: "I will never even look at a collection that has had anyone else peruse and buy some discs. They bought your collection." As in, most 'collections' are really 'accumulations', the dealer will buy your accumulation and give you psychological cover that someone really values all of it, but keep the valuable stuff and bin the rest --- and first do an assay that there are indeed some gems in the ore.
Also, "If you recognize the performers, it's not of any value".
I see so many records at thrift shops that make me think "Crap, did I drop that off by mistake in my last move" that I have to concede that the fate of my collection will be the replacement of fossil fuels. As a classical listener and collector, I am nontheless moving to a (cynical?) assessment that a lot of those collections are "the music you were told you should enjoy".
Yep, it's heartbreaking. This thread makes me think about what the real goal should be, given that the material media is merely fuel. Maybe a short document about the things that I want to charge the beneficiaries with giving a listen to?
Personally ill be happy if my children would listen to some of the music i like and remember me. my collection will not mean anything to them, nor should it.
also consider (Grand)^n(children)
Ideas about how to leave a 'repertoire legacy' would merit a new thread!
begin-quote>>
Items donated to the Internet Archive become the property of Internet Archive, and will be recorded as an unrestricted gift. Items are not returnable after donation. We can provide a donation receipt roughly describing the donation back that can be used for tax purposes– but we can not do an appraisal.
For materials that do not fit into our collections for any reason, they are often donated to other non-profits or worthy causes, but sometimes recycled. Rarely are materials sold.
<<<end-quote
So I see nothing in this to suggest anything more than that I can donate my collection in plastic totes, and expect the totes to be re-used.
I'm not complaining, but I am pointing out that expecting more than that isn't what's on offer. The IA and the VCF may need to be more explicit in saying that "giving us your trust means accepting our judgement".
Actually, I think the IA is explicit, just 'diplomatic'.
VCF = Vintage Computer Federation, a national non-profit
VCF also = Vintage Computer Festival
VCFestival East and West are run by VCFederation. VCFestival MidWest is not.
Vintage Computer Festival as a name has a complicated history, but the short version is anyone can use the term and does use the term.
VCFederation also manages the warehouse and museum space in Wall, NJ. The blog author has an issue with VCFederation, not all VCFestivals.
I would willingly gift them to good homes, I feel my role is as a custodian. I cannot make use of these things, but I can ensure that they continue to exist.
I can completely sympathise with the anger that the author of this post feels. They were performing this custodial role and the expectation in passing to a new custodian is that they preserve the material or pass on to a new custodian. I'm sure if faced with the option of destruction or taking back the donation the author would have taken it back.
Can you imagine having been gifted this by one of the most popular (if not THE most popular) name online for archiving things and then just. Dumping it? No shit he's offended. Shame that orgs get screwed when quality members leave. They deserve to be called out for this publicly, and hopefully they learn their
Donor: I would like to charge you with care and control of this archival material. Recipient: Thank you for the containers and fuel.
What happened then is in the past, no going back. The incident raises the bar for archive recipients ("is this an archive, what can we do with it").
Some archiving orgs now will not accept donations without a monetary donation to cover the archiving process. I have to say I agree with that, insofar as it filters out "I didn't discard it, I donated it to a museum".
Very clearly and with no ambiguity at all, it was vcf who totally failed at their task.
I don't define "their task" as simply "posess and operate an excellent document storage facility", but merely be minimally professional and responsible enough to avoid accepting material they are unable or unwilling to deal with, and if you do accept it and then change your mind, find someone else or go back to the doner, and suck it up until you can undo your mistake.
This is not a "miscommunication". The people involved and the context does not allow anyone to claim anything like that.
A random person didn't dump a truckload of random material on the front lawn of another random person unsolicited.
A famous vintage computer organization accepted a set of vintage computer documents from a famous archivist.
vcf accepted responsibility for the material, and then, I don't even know the right word, they didn't merely fail, that implies trying, what is failure to discharge a responsibility when you don't even try in the first place? What is the excuse for not even so much as iquiring if Jason could possibly just take it back? How much does an email cost?
Everything was checked for archiving. Everything was offered to anyone who would listen for over a year. Most of the paper found a good home. In fact, a better home as the warehouse is near the ocean and has no climate control. Not a good place to donate paper. It should never have been donated and should never have been accepted (under previous management).
I was actually there. Nothing in this blog post is factual.
So VCF doesn’t have those plastic boxes any more?
But they were there two years ago, so I'll correct myself say almost the entirety of the blog post is false.
> I offered to privately explain what really happened on Twitter (X) and was blocked as a result and made out to be accusing OP of being a liar.
It just took up space that was ultimately used to save more important items, like actual computers, and was in a venue that was absolutely hostile to paper. So the paper found better homes. The statement that it was thrown away is factually incorrect. The implication that somehow history was lost is also incorrect.
I get coming on here to correct the record, but why the hostility toward the author when the factually incorrect statement was made to him by someone at VCF? Or are you suggesting he’s lying about what he was told?
I only ask because you seem to be relaying details with an air of authority but not engaging with important follow-up comments. The posted link mentions "mostly IEEE related" and "few other sets of titles" which I imagine all being behind the IEEE Digital Library paywall. Even if it's just Spectrum and maybe interesting SIG (Special Interest Group) publications, those being made available freely seems like a win? But this is all just my guessing and hope to find some clarification about what happened if we aren't supposed to take the posted link as fact.
The single most important piece of information in the blog post is that he was told the materials were disposed of. That’s either true, or is a lie—I fail to see an interpretation of that that could be called “conjecture”.
- He donated some stuff.
- He was told the papers were tossed.
That's not conjecture. It could be false, but why would Jason Scott decide to lie about being told this? That just makes no sense. The best thing I can think of is that there was some severe communication breakdown, but if that's the case this is really not a good response, because it implies that Jason is intentionally just making shit up and I don't understand why anyone would assume that.
I am not saying anything regarding the papers having been tossed, and I would like to believe your version of the events where they were not. However, Jason having apparently been told the papers were tossed is fully 100% compatible with that also having not actually happened, and presumably you weren't the one to communicate with Jason in that situation, so how exactly do you know?
My impression is that you hastily defended a former employer, and when questioned, you started making things up.
I think you are actually formerly connected to VCF, since a twitter user (Adam Michlin) sharing your username is currently flaming the OP: https://twitter.com/amichlin/status/1778494138138124432
>> It should never have been donated and should never have been accepted (under previous management).
I recall that you were too busy, in your volunteer days there, running your mouth and telling me how to do my job. Yet the problems VCF has now never happened under my watch.
This is more of an insult than a consolation. I'm still in disbelief that they were tossed out rather than offered back or donated elsewhere.
Was the issue about disrespect, the loss of the periodicals, mismanagement, or a combination? It doesn’t say.
I know this is only one side of the story, but based on his subjective experience here, I can’t say I blame the guy at all for feeling so insulted or being unwilling to accept an apology.
If a billionaire funded museum could run into trouble (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34831880) what hope is there for anything else.
PS. I have a cache of ~10,000 1980s and 90s DIP ICs (8032 Micro controllers and support chips) that I want to find a use for. You could contact me at my account name without the punctuation at gmail.
Jody Allen doesn't care about LCM, so she "shut it down" rather than continue paying for it, but apparently she can't completely shut it down--probably due to how its structure was set up when founded, at least Paul got that right--otherwise I expect she would.
In other words, the problem with LCM was pretty specific to the timing of Paul's death and the shiftiness of his sister, not anything to do with museums for this sort of thing as a class.
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Speaking from experience tho people clearing out storage containers sometimes do strange things
Emphasis mine.
However due to poor planning the donation was stored near salt water in a non climate controlled warehouse.
> https://twitter.com/amichlin/status/1778494138138124432
> "Well, it never should have been accepted in the first place. But literally everything was being accepted at the time. Finite space combined with salt water air was the culprit after the original poor planning."
It seems that the donation was split up by allowing others take what they wanted. (no reports on what happened to the rest)
> https://twitter.com/amichlin/status/1778494742742827195
> "And whoever told you they were thrown away was misinformed and not involved. There were cycles over and over again of allowing people to save anything they could carry. So it was split up, but mostly found good (not salt water rich) homes."
Note: Not taking sides - just stating what I read on Twitter/X/Whatever its called these days!