[Milsurplus] Archive to Donate

[Ray Fantini]

When I was involved with AMSAT we had lots of people and companies that wanted to donate archives. Problem was storage space was always an issue. Paper archives can build up fast, quite often we are talking about hundreds of items so it's not just a box of records but hundreds of pounds of papers. Warehouse space is expensive, rent and utilities along with someone to stack, catalog and move the stuff. Whenever you get a donated storage space that has a habit of going away at some point then you're moving all that stuff again. We had a time just allocating space for donated flight ready hardware, tools and test equipment, stewardship of others archives had to be a lower priority. Then in the case of corporate material many companies cannot consider giving the material to an individual because then they have no control over it. What if that person goes thru that material and finds information that's detrimental to the company and publishes it? What if they turn around and sell it? In today's world any company is going to shred something way before taking any chance on it coming back to bite them. But let's not despair too much; there are more museums, on line archives and collectors than ever before. Look at the proliferation of museum ships and aviation museums in the last fifty years. I just finished putting together some media for the kiosks for the Frank Perdue museum we have here at our Perdue School of business that we just opened this year. That's a three hundred thousand dollar investment with a third of the space for traveling exhibits and our first one there is on Richard Bernstein who is one of the founders of K&L microwave where they brought in examples projects K&L manufactured. In addition to all this our school operates the Ward Brothers Museum of Wildfowl Art, one of the largest collections in the world of water fowl and decoy art. From what I recall that facility not including the collection was around four and a half million, who would have thorough that wooden decoys are that big of a deal?  Maybe they would feel the same way about electronics? And last but not least we operate something called The Nabb Research Center that exists solely to preserve local history. And this is just one small university. Maybe the key to preserving history is to preserve it where it takes place? And to get out and work with the local agencies in that community, volunteer and contribute but have to wonder what if anything this ongoing thread about how the worlds going to hell and how the rest of the worlds a bunch of idiots is going to help anything.
Ray F, KA3EKH