Re: What to Do With Older Technical Info.

Hello, I know what your talking about. I have a collection of the Nuts&Volts mags that spans close to 20years some gaps though, and other mags "ham radio". And data books from the late 60's through the mid late 80's.

But your catalogs especially any electronic components could be good for companies "ex:nuclear service" that source new old stock "NOS" or recondition parts for customers that have needs to repair or replace parts or equipment. Example: a customer needs say 200 "x"brand i.c.s made in the 70's for there inventory stock.

Having the original data book or catalog w/spec. helps to setup tests to check the "NOS" or recondition parts still function as designed/spec. Even new part brand "Y" appears to be the same may not perform to original spec. in service and has not been qualified for the service.

In some cases parts can not be gotten in either "NOS" or recondition. Then the new parts have to go through qualification procedure that can cost a lot of money an time.

Hope this helps you or gives someone else ideas to help you out. It would be nice like you suggested if someone or group could digitize and put on the web for all to access.

The web is a quick source for a lot of info. But manufactures seem to delete old/obsolete data sheets just about as fast as new parts come out. Even if mfg's that buy out other companies would just put up data sheets as non-supported legacy data.

Sorry for the tangent there. I have faced the same dilemma your facing. I have no other ideas other than what you or I have suggested.

Good luck. Charles.

I don't know where you are, but have you tried putting them up on craigslist under free stuff? Someone may be able to appreciate them.

Can you tell us the town and state where the booty is stored, and roughly how many boxes of stuff it represents? Thanks!

Hey, good luck to you, man! You've earned it.

Thank you all for replying.

metalSmiths - a kindred spirit, I see. It's always nice to know I'm not alone in caring about this sort of thing.

kramarat - No, I didn't think of Craig's list. Thank you for the suggestion. metalSmiths and I share the feeling that it would be nice to see it serve a larger audience.

Winfield - These items are in Georgetown, Texas, which is about 25 miles north of Austin, Texas. I can only estimate, and it depends on the size of the boxes used for packing. I have also been a very regular book buyer over my lifetime and have accumulated over 8,000 books! I've found that boxes from liquor stores are just about right for packing printed material. They don't get so heavy that they are hard to manage or as likely to hurt one's back moving them around. I would say everything would probably fit in 15-20 boxes of this size, give or take a few -- especially if I were to sort through the vendor catalogs, some of which may not be that valuable.

I don't know how to interpret 3 replies out of the number of people that visit these forums, but I suppose I could go through an exercise, like Drake's equation...

In any event, to know that at least 3 people care enough about my caring for the fate of this information, to reply, gives me pause in just throwing it all away. Because of my previous experience, it won't change my expectations of the end result. But I didn't get any supportive response before. Maybe it also says something about the folks who visit CR4. Or maybe CR4 is a targeted audience and had I had it available years ago, might have had better success back then.

When I moved to the Austin area, it was the tail end of the boom there -- it being nicknamed, Silicon Gulch. So I was surprised that the educational community (mainly Austin Community College and University of Texas) demonstrated virtually no interest.

I'll be going there within the next week or so. Your replies have helped me to try to decide what I will do when it's time to step up to the plate. Maybe other replies will be forthcoming. Maybe I'll end up seeing myself as a "caretaker" until someone comes along... maybe I could use a "Golden Ticket."

Again, thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

kramarat mentioned Craig's list. There's also eBay. I know because I've seen them offered and I've even bought quite a few (well, some) old catalogs and magazine issues on eBay.

But putting them up can be quite a bit of work: to sell they need pictures and a bit of a description. Usually you can't group more than 3 to 5 together, or the buyer's eyes glaze over and interest flags. You have to sell them for modest $$, but you can make a slight bit back by charging a bit extra fixed-price for s/h, it's the "h" part you're adding on. The low U.S.P.S. book rate is helpful. By the time the dust settles, it's a pretty poor pay scale, but at least you know the recipient really wants 'em, because they paid for 'em.

Thanks for you further thoughts.

Because of my emotional state I don't have much sustained energy for this sort of thing right now. If I decide to keep them, I'll be factoring in the process you've described... and it will happen at a later date when, hopefully, I'm better able to do that sort of thing. I certainly can't fathom caring enough to try to scan this info. myself for the electronics community at large, even though that is, somewhat the driving force here.

Sorry for the hard times you're going through. My wife calls me a pack rat and I'm guilty. On craigslist you could pretty much just copy and paste your above description. If you get any responses, they will be coming from someone that finds this stuff important enough to come get it......I'm sure a fellow engineering type.

Trying to get it out in the public eye is noble, but it sounds like you have pretty much exhausted those avenues. Good luck on your quest.

I will say there's a hell of a lot of throwing away going on. The modern thought is that anything you might want to look at has already been scanned and placed on the web. For stuff generated in the mid 90s that may be almost true (if you can find it), but for older stuff, not necessarily. Moreover, the scans are often defective, requiring you to go back to the original literature. Often you can't read the axis values of a graph or interpret details on a drawing, etc.

That said, checking just now I see about 150k Acrobat pdf documents in my computer, taking about 100G of disk space. Only a small portion of that was scanned by me; the rest I got from the manufacturer, often years ago, or from someone else who scanned it and placed it on the web. When I'm looking for a datasheet, I prefer to find it in my computer, if I can (one problem is that many or most of these files have not been OCR'd, so they can't be searched).

Some people assume files will always remain available, but I've found too many cases where they disappear, so I try to obtain my own copy to be sure. That's especially true for discontinued parts, etc. Manufacturers feel safe to simple eradicate them, even if the item has only been discontinued for a year or two. What are they thinking?

I have shelved a goodly number of paper databooks, etc., and am forced to refer to them from time to time, and they are a lifesaver when that happens. But it happens less and less often.

So anyway, bottom line, I'm saying that if you do toss your treasures, all may not be lost, so to speak. That even holds true should you want to start looking again at the same things you used to look at.

yup... what do you do when the power goes out...

read a book!

I have 5000 books in a storage shed in Ontario that I still pay for every month (for the last x years... (gladly) I consider technical how-to books to be 'concentrated absolute value' period.

Chris

Your 8000 books are valuable, and are very easy to sell on Amazon, where the basic description has probably already been created. You just put them up, and sit back and wait. If you price yours at or near the bottom of the pack, I suppose it'll sell quicker than the rest of the listings. You may have some books with no other sellers, or one or two sellers who are asking and waiting for $175 for their precious book. Most of them can continue to wait.

This is what I do wrt archives. I scan in the contents page(s) on my PC for later reference. Whatever books I really must get rid of, I pass onto to students that are interested in the subject. Could be that there are poor schools, colleges out there that can make use of the publications. If not in your region, what about Africa? Only problem would be the shipping cost. Not necessary to send all the magazines of the same type to one place.

Could be that some organizations, NGO's might be prepared to cover the shipping costs or even take some mags along on their trips. What about asking Engineers without Borders? - http://www.ewb-international.org/

I had a collection of Scientific American 1965-2002 which cherished. But I have not looked at these in years. Could be of much greater use to people who are likey to browsed through them. I have a different problem: I have tons of photocopied pages (1-4 per document) stored in files that I need to get onto PC somehow. This will take ages. But I thought of employing a student to scan in and lable these. Will do a practice run today to see how long a batch might take this way.

Excellent plan my friend!

Chris

I have been thru similar conditions and constellations too, several times and so to say always after changing the position or moving to an new place. The more times I repeat this I tend towards throwing away as much as I can. So far I have missed only very few things, either hard- or software (magazines, catalogs, books, etc.). There was always any way to get either a replacement or a new issue of the missed item. <p> But by throwing away you not only free-up your valuable and limited storage space but also your mental capacity, which was always the most valuable for me. I also did scan some - IMHO valuable - articles and other printed information and saved audio content of some old compact cassettes and vinyl records to mp3 files before I trashed them. As of today I've used those scans and records only to check what it was but I never needed or searched for any of the old archived items. <p> In my actual company do we maintain an old paper archive which was started in 1898, about 40 years before the official inauguration of the laboratory. We considered to scan in all items but refused on the huge amount of time needed and the fact that probably only a very small percentage of the documents would be needed later in electronic form. Instead we had a person who recorded the titel, abstract and shelf position of each document into a database with search options. I someone needs a document he may call the secretary which will then scan the file and reference the database entry to the scanned file(s). After this has been done one could in theory trash the paper item, which we did not do so far. <p> What I personally still keep sort-of unchanged is the digital archive. There the situation is quite similar to the real items archive, except that it doesn't take storage space. I barely needed items. Only very few my old program sources I have used for reference and many of this old code is today outdated or old fashioned if still readable at all. <p> I also changed the scopes of my work and life several times, which makes old items even less valuable, because of the increased distance to those times. I realized several times when I met former colleagues or went back to do maintenance on old projects that there is so much new technology out these days, that it might be much easier to redo it from scratch or just get a solution off-the-shelf. <p> To finalize my comment: Trash as much as you can and enjoy your mental freedom as much as possible. Time runs too fast for scanning old articles and the like.

Guys, I had a hard time getting in to work today. I want to respond to your comments but am emotionally drained at the moment. I hope to post more later. Thanks for all your continued comments.

Compassion is not available on Craig's List, eBay, or sadly most other websites or public libraries.

I don't know your circumstance, but I'd like to ask you two favors if you wouldn't consider that callous:

1) say hello to Austin for me; '64 to '68, then '74 thru early '76 and again '92 to mid '94.

2) Please avail yourself of the fine people there even if you have to stretch your circle of contacts to find those who can participate with you in overcoming your grief OTHER than the loss of the books. There is more at stake here, I sense, than 29 U-Haul book-boxes of printed material.

I look forward to your continued posting here. Until then,

Regards,

Gene