[NJARC] Computer destroyed in fire

[Magoun, Alex]

To confirm John Tyminski's report, my board has voted to transfer the archival collections to the Hagley Library in Wilmington, Delaware (www.hagley.org/library/ -- conveniently closer to John Dilks and his research interests than Princeton) and the artifact collections to The College of New Jersey Foundation, which will display it in a newly renovated space in its old library on campus, 9 miles from the RCA Labs.  I have been arranging for the transfer of some items to other organizations, including the Camden County Historical Society, InfoAge, the Newseum, and the State Museum.

Regarding the notebooks, I am disposing of 20-50 out of a couple of thousand because of severe mold or flood damage that washed away the contents.  I am also debinding another 20-50 whose covers are mold damaged, because no archives, no matter how dry, wants visible fungus in its storage area.  None of the ones that I have disposed of are by anyone of note, and we are transferring hundreds of notebooks--whose contents bored even Dave Sica--by historically anonymous technicians and staff members.

Not all notebooks are created equal.  It's historically useful to keep some full of routine scope tests, batch runs of semiconductors, and field surveys, the results of which are summarized in more significant technical reports.  It's neither historically nor practically useful to preserve all of them for eternity.  Those who argue for saving everything from an undefined past are welcome to indulge their compulsion in the privacy of their homes and not force it on others.

Those who criticize the decisions or indecisions of the elderly because of an incapacity to imagine a life or mentality other than the one they hold might try reading a bit more fiction.  Good literature fosters both empathy and humility in a reader.

Those who criticize basement storage because of flooding never have a practical alternative.  You have employees and you have historical documents: who goes in the windowless rooms?  In this vein of helpful second guessing and thoughtful hindsight, we should also blame the archivists of Louisiana and Mississippi for maintaining collections in a hurricane zone, Johns Hopkins for storing its rare books collection underground, Rutgers Special Collections for not replacing a water pipe to anticipate pinhole corrosion, etc.

Water and fire happen; parts of the past fade from our own memories as well as the documentary and material record, and we try to make sense of the rest.  The 20th century is the most heavily recorded one on paper in human history.  Instead of complaining about what we're missing, start using what we have to write your histories-at the Hagley, at InfoAge, at the archives across our state and beyond.

See you Saturday, where maybe you'll be the lucky winner of . . . ;)

Alex

Alexander B. Magoun Ph.D.
Curator and Executive Director
David Sarnoff Library
201 Washington Road
Princeton NJ 08540-6449

609 734-2636
amagoun at davidsarnoff.org
f 609 734-2339
davidsarnoff.org
davidsarnoff.blogspot.com