
We are barely halfway done - pmorici
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4711
======
McKayDavis
It's sad to see a company go out of business, but I applaud the owners of
Manuals Plus [1] for making such a large donation to the Internet Archive.

To provide some more context about what the actual contents of the archive
includes, a description is on their about page [2]:

 _" Manuals Plus buys and sells Electronic Test & Measurement Equipment
Manuals. We stock over 400,000 manuals at our Westminster, Maryland location.
Our inventory consists of Operator, Service, Calibration, and Programming
manuals."_

[1] [http://www.manualsplus.com/](http://www.manualsplus.com/)

[2]
[http://www.manualsplus.com/About.php](http://www.manualsplus.com/About.php)

~~~
pmorici
The way I understand it, the company behind the manualsplus.com service (Ridge
Equipment Company, Inc.) isn't going out of business. The issue is they needed
to move to a new location and it didn't make economic sense for them to
continue with the manuals part of their business when considering the cost of
outfitting the new facility for their storage and moving the material.

~~~
xur17
If that's the case, they should be getting a nice tax deduction for the
donation, right?

~~~
stingraycharles
.. which might be more than they would have gotten for them in an auction.
Clever.

~~~
maxerickson
Likely not, the ones they are throwing in the dumpster are making a statement
about the estimated value of the rest of them.

------
clone1018
Jason Scott is really one of the heros of our time. His dedication to
preserving history is seriously amazing. I really hope to meet him one day.

------
ak217
Jason Scott is doing an incredible public service here. Presuming this gets
scanned and released to the public, it will over time result in many pieces of
recycled electronics, inspired engineers, and derivative art.

~~~
leni536
> Presuming this gets scanned and released to the public

What is the copyright status of these manuals? I hope they don't bump into any
legal problem though and they can release scans.

~~~
userbinator
Some of the oldest ones are probably in the public domain, but I guess the
others are still copyrighted; nevertheless, I trust the Internet Archive will
have that figured out as they have collected plenty of other copyrighted
material before this.

~~~
SolarNet
Archives have some pretty broad exceptions to copyright infringement laws.

[0]
[http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#108](http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#108)

------
Axsuul
Some context:
[http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683)

------
kriro
What an amazing effort. In case someone local wants to join in:

The warehouse is located in Finksburg, MD, about 30 miles northwest of
Baltimore.

[taken from the original post of the issue:
[http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683)]

~~~
madmaze
I and many others spent basically all day there yesterday. It's fun to look
through all of these manuals. It takes a lot of concentration picking out the
unique copies and leaving the many copies behind. Especially HP.. arg so, so
many revisions of the same manual.

~~~
niklasni1
Thank you for your effort.

------
nitrogen
If this weren't happening so far away, I'd be there to help. Historical
preservation, especially of niche documents like electronics manuals, will
become increasingly important over time as historical equipment needs to be
maintained, patents need to be refuted with prior art, etc.

------
Animats
He's getting great service from Uline, the packaging material supplier. 4-hour
delivery on pallet loads of boxes.

~~~
erode
Well that's because he paid $4,000 for it.

~~~
textfiles
I paid $560 for the courier service Uline provided. The rest was the cost of
the 1,200 boxes, regardless of shipping method (Roughly $3,400)

------
bootload
you can get a view of what's going on by looking through the images at
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/sets/721576572772417...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/sets/72157657277241785)
there's also microfiche.

------
WalterBright
I've never heard of this company before now. I've needed a manual for my
Leader LBO-514A oscilloscope, and it turns out they have one. I guess Jason
has it now!

~~~
bitJericho
I needed a manual for a piece of consumer electronics but they didn't have the
manual. The manufacturer did though when I contacted them. I thought about
giving the copy to this company but I felt no desire to help some business out
like that, but for the IA, heck yeah, I might have to send it off to them.

------
peterwwillis
Oh wow, I thought this was in SF, and then I realized one of the guys in the
picture is Maze, a guy who helps run a hackerspace here in Baltimore. I had no
idea this was happening! And not only do I have to work, I injured my neck and
back, so I can't lift anything. And no car. Crap. I hope more local people
find out about this, though!

~~~
voltagex_
If you know people in the area, can't you make a few calls to see if anyone
else can help?

------
WalterBright
I wish I could be there to help. But I can't, so I made another donation.

Jason and the other volunteers, my thanks! You guys are heroes.

------
jayzalowitz
Jason, You continue to make me feel awesome about humanity. Say hello to socks
for me.

------
ommunist
I think, we all should tip to buy a vacuum book scanner for Mr Scott, if he
shall decide to digitize manuals. You won't believe how useful this library
will be for the folks in the field.

~~~
throwaway7767
It would probably be better to donate such a thing to the Internet Archive and
get to use it for this project. This guy is renting storage space for the
manuals out of his own pocket, it's unlikely he has space for industrial
scanning equipment at home.

~~~
enf
Jason Scott works for the Internet Archive, as well as doing his own archiving
and documentary work.

~~~
throwaway7767
> Jason Scott works for the Internet Archive, as well as doing his own
> archiving and documentary work.

Yes, I know.

The GP comment suggested giving an expensive, large industrial scanner to "Mr.
Scott", which I interpreted as giving it to him personally. My point was
simply that it would be more appropriate to give it to the Internet Archive.

~~~
ommunist
I just thought that this particular mission was initiative of Mr Scott
himself, not the Internet Archive as business entity.

------
eddyb
Let the future remember the past clearer than we ever could.

------
yitchelle
Thinking outside the box here, would it not be more effective contacting some
of the companies still operating (eg, HP, Intel, Philips etc) to see if they
have some of the operating manuals already scanned, and available publicly?

~~~
WalterBright
You're right that it is not worth bothering with the manuals already online
and available. But clearly they are so short of time they cannot spare the
time to do such searches, and can only just grab them all.

------
Navarr
Wait Columbus? That's not drastically far..

------
fluffyllemon
For context:

This is the third post in a series. The author (Jason Scott) is trying to save
~25,000 manuals, instruction booklets, and engineering notes (largely
electronics related, created over the last 80 years). This is a large project,
the company which owns the manuals currently is going out of business, and all
the manuals will be thrown away very soon (re: tomorrow).

First post:
[http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4711](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4711)
Second post:
[http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683)

~~~
lectrick
It is infeasible (IMHO) to deal with all physical manuals ever in this way,
unless you are literally a Manuals Library that is supported by the county or
whatever.

I think the only way to go forward is to digitize the shit out of everything.

------
tmuir
I've noticed that a lot of headlines on HN are intentionally vague, to pique
reader's interest. I'm not sure what being intentionally vague for an entire
article is supposed to accomplish.

What is it that is barely halfway done?

~~~
Maxious
Well also to comply with
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.

~~~
mindcrime
And this is a _perfect_ example of a time when using the original title is
stupid. There's absolutely no good reason to insist on original titles for
their own sake, when the original title is meaningless, lacks context, or is
otherwise inadequate - none of which are necessarily the same thing as
"misleading or linkbait".

~~~
bosdev
The logic is to prevent sensational titles. By forcing the title to be the
page's heading, it limits posters ability to target the hn audience with a
snappy, BuzzFeed-like, heading.

~~~
scintill76
So instead, authors of the article can target any audience with snappy,
BuzzFeed-like headings, and the HN poster can either copy it or rewrite it,
and they'll get complaints either way...

------
ProntoJr
wow, just wow. huge work indeed

