[Milsurplus] Archive to Donate

[J. Forster]

> 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.

A fair point, but there are records and meaningful records.

In buying surplus, I've been through warehouses that had hundreds of feet
of shelving of boxes of paper. Most of that is meaningless...  trhings
like QA reports on modules, test records, purchase orders, and the other
day-to-day paper of producing product. The meaningful engineering stuff,
which should be preserved, is a tiny subset of that.

> 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?

Records are usually held by the originator company until the Statute of
Limitations has long expired.

> What if they turn around and sell it?

Who, other than a historian would want it? Is anybody really going to
build new ARC-5s today?

> 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.

Yes, but they are far too evanescent. Is Bill Howard's site still
available? Not AFAIK.

> Look at the proliferation of museum ships and aviation
> museums in the last fifty years.

Yes, and some, but not all, want to gut the electronics to save weight.

> 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

But that serves a modern purpose...  selling chickens and chicken
accessories. :)

> 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?

You could presereve a lot of radios, etc, for that kind of money.

YMMV,

-John

=================

> 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
>
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