[ghaff]

One has to believe that, before electronic formats became common, there were a ton of niche hobbyist and other magazines that never made their way into a library, mostly ended up in the trash because the owners didn't want to move them to a new house, and no one has bothered to digitize them and upload them--especially as they're probably technically violating someone's copyright.

I know I have copies of some niche things that aren't online anywhere as far as I know--and, absent digitization and upload--will presumably fade from existence at some point.

[qingcharles]

Yeah, just one quick look on Craigslist and you will see dozens of people throwing out thousands of magazines for free just to get someone to lift them.

If I had the space I would take every one of them, but I don't right now. Maybe in a few months. I'm going to start trying to raise capital to take them all and scan all the missing ones. Most magazines in existence are now copyright orphans.

[duskwuff]

> Yeah, just one quick look on Craigslist and you will see dozens of people throwing out thousands of magazines for free just to get someone to lift them.

The question would be how many of those are magazines which need preserving. You'd be wasting your time scanning old issues of National Geographic, for instance; there are already comprehensive archives of those.

[ghaff]

Unfortunately a lot of the comprehensive archives are not readily accessible. Even with National Geographic, there are a lot of complaints about the current complete set having really janky software. An older set I have would require me messing around with VMs and an old version of Windows. (I got it at a library book sale and never got it working.)

There are a number of magazines I would pay for the archives and they may well exist but I can't access them anywhere.

[qingcharles]

I am only interested in scanning magazines that aren't already available, or the available copies are poor.