2024 Forum Archival Project
(originally in this shared Google Doc, which will certainly at some point become a dead link)
Dates Available
Note: obviously some availability is subject to change, like if there's a party somewhere or something.
May
Can do May 29th, 30th, 31st
Cannot do anything before that
June
Prefer any Saturday or Sunday in June
Can do most weekdays in June so long as there's a week or two advance notice
Cannot do June 5th, 26th
July
Prefer Sat 6th, Sun 7th, Sat 27th, Sun 28th
Can do July 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th, 23rd-26th, 29th-31st
Cannot do July 3rd, 10th-23rd (North American SF Convention), 24th
August
Prefer Sun 25th, Sat 31st
Can do August 1st, 2nd, 22nd, 23rd, 26th, 27th, 29th, 30th
Cannot do August 3rd-21st (going to Worldcon!)
Recommended Procedure
Note: It doesn't have to go down this way, but this sort of "hard stuff first" approach is probably better in he long view. Overview
First Visit is the tough one. We should move ALL the boxes out and peek in each. If a box is filled with books, we move it back in first. Then boxes which are NOT books get to go at the front/top. That way, every subsequent visit is a super quick grab. It's unlikely that the Forum will need short term access to the books, given the unlikelihood that the Library will be suddenly expanded.
Each time I pop in, I'll grab a few boxes. I'll scan them, upload the digital copies to a shared location, and if necessary try to bucket sort the boxes by decade. The boxes will be marked as archived so we don't nab them again.
No idea how long the gaps between visits would take, but it's conceivable that it might happen once a month, pretty possible that I'll visit twice, and probably a bit likely that whatever I grab the first time will take the whole Summer to process.
If I can wrangle additional help from other people who have scanners, we might take more and distribute them out. But I am a little paranoid about some stuff ending up unaccounted for.
First Visit
Ideally, I'll need five volunteers: Two Strongs (not counting me, a third Strong), two Perceptives, and Gentile. The system works like an assembly line, or line pipelining in a cpu
Retrieval Strong gets up on a ladder and brings heavy boxes down to the floor.
Queue Manager Strong takes the boxes and gives them to the next section. This is more complex than you'd think, because boxes might come in faster than they go out, so QMS needs to have them in a holding spot but also needs to be able to send out a box and take in a box the instant that such action is needed.
Inspector Perceptives are two people with a simple job. They open up a box received by the Queue Manager, determine whether the box is principally books or not, and hand them off. They can also do some minor arrangement of items, such as taking out a Record if it's in a box of otherwise boring (footnote: boring means not applicable to this exercise. Books are awesome in every other conceivable context.) books and placing it in the next box that has Records.
Book Stacker takes the boxes that are identified as having principally books and stacks them out of he way.
Gentle Stacker takes non-book boxes and stacks them out of the way. This person needs to be careful, as Records could be really old and easily damageable.
After all the boxes and junk (footnote: we'll need to figure out if non-boxed junk goes in the Book area or the Records area) are out, we immediately start putting stuff back in. Book boxes go in first. After they're all in, boxes that aren't books but also aren't Records go back in. Then Junk that isn't Records go in, like the ugly lamp that probably still exists. Finally, we end up with boxes of records.
Archivist Prime, a cool title that I claim for myself, take a few of the boxes of Records. They'll be processed off-site. We'll decide if others have the ability to also take boxes home -- it requires access to a flatbed scanner and willingness to do tedium. The remaining boxes then get put back in the storage area so that next time they will be super easy to retrieve.
Subsequent Visits
(to-write)