So we get some weird and sometimes really cool stuff donated to our library.
What kinda cool stuff, you ask?
How about a complete set of 1979 drawings and service manuals for an Atari Asteroids cabinet?
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What’s that? You want something weird?
How about this factory-sealed Leonard Nimoy-narrated Y2K survival guide on VHS?
How about a mint condition new-in-box VHS about the coming apocalypse, with cover art courtesy of the sweet dudes who designed your badass Trapper Keeper in 1995?
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Oh man, the End Times got you down?
How about chilling out to some tunes on these classic 8 tracks?
Be careful you don’t get overwhelmed my dudes, because this TWIN PACK contains the equivalent of two complete stereo records!
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Whoa, that’s a little old school! Let’s take it up a notch and get back into this millenium with a collection of 130+ mystery games circa 2002!
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OK Film Fatale is pretty clever.
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For the record, I’m genuinely happy people bring weird and cool old biz to us!
We got the arcade cabinet stuff and all the games sent over to a video game historical archive project at the University of Michigan and if we can’t find a home for the VHS tapes and cassettes and whatever else, we’ll put them out for other people to grab.
…and sometimes I get some cool stuff for my desk.
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I had no idea there were so many of that type of game made.
Somebody loved the heck out of them.
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Oh it’s a total wheat/chaff situation.
I can’t tell you how many Reader’s Digests I’ve thrown away just this week.
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My wife is (or was, she’s administration now) a librarian, so she has some stories too. She would also find amusing stuff she weeded out of the stacks and brought it home. One was a well-intentioned but very poorly-executed book called Getting Along With Jewish Neighbors.
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I think that’s neat, but I’d be pretty ticked off if someone tried to donate it to our library. (We have policies about what we won’t accept, but sometimes it’s hard to enforce them when someone just shows up with a box. I’d estimate we take less than 5% into the collection and even a lot of the rest just ends up being thrown out rather than being deemed worthy of the annual book sale.)
Do you guys actually have some special collection on video game history or is this just “hey, random junk, of course the library will want it?”
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I got lucky when David Ogden Stiers bequeathed his CD collection to our local library and they sold for $1 a disc.
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! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
Oh, wow…
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Don’t show me soundtrack CDs. I have so many soundtrack CDs. My father was a film historian and he collected soundtracks (mostly on LP). I have sold or given away the LP collection, which amounted to thousands of records (not all soundtracks), but I still have most of the CDs. They’re buried behind other stuff, so I can’t even think of getting rid of them yet, but just seeing that picture gives me hives.
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YES, PLEASE!
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The Internet Archive will any of your surplus stuff, if they don’t already have a copy.
“If you are wondering what to do with your excess materials, the Internet Archive can help. The nonprofit library accepts donation books, records (CDs, LPs, 45rpm, 78rpm, cylinders), films, and microforms that it does not already have in its collection. The Archive preserves one copy of everything it receives and tries to find good homes for duplicates. Then, as funding allows, the Archive digitizes the materials and helps them reach a wider audience online.”
Scroll down to where it says, “Donation Process”.
ETA: I have a serious love of The Internet Archive.
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Huh, I had no idea they accepted physical media.
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Yep, they do.
The are the ultimate archivists, and I adore that.
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