[somnic]

It would've been courteous to offer it back to the donor, if they weren't equipped or willing to archive or distribute it. I'm guessing that's probably not standard practice, but surely it's common for people donate things to be archived because they're in some way important to the donor.

[Brian_K_White]

This.

It's what any minimally civilized adult does in any context, to respect someone else's efforts or valuables regardless if a thing is valuable to yourself. At least enough to try to give it back. At least enough to warn "hey, I'm just going throw this away".

It sounds like what happened here is individual turnover, where the entity that accepted the material is not the same entity that discarded the material.

It's still a vcf failure though, not a blameless accident.

As an organization they accepted a task and then did not do it. An individual leaving should not cause that. We invented writing and institutional knowledge thousands of years ago. And the organization certainly retains the benefits of the ongoing organizational continuity.

If anyone would say that turnover excuses anything, then I say that can only be valid if the organizations name and other assets also all evaporate at the same time as their obligations and agreements evaporate. You don't get to shed one and keep the other!

So it's fair to just judge the organization for committing this act the same as you would a person. Never trust them again with anything you care about. And as in Jason's case where he particularly cares about specifically preserving documents, and so is particularly burned by someone dropping that specific ball they agreed to take from him specifically, in his case it's totally fair for him to not want to even associate at all with them ever again, even if we all don't have to go that far.

They burned him especially badly, retroactively made him fail at a job he has set himself, by giving him a thumbs up we got this but then pissing on the work.

That makes Jason into a bad steward since he trusted them. He's not really a bad steward of course but it doesn't change the fact that what he set out to accomplish, and a responsibility he himself accepted from yet others before him, has failed. Not everyone has to care so much about some old magazines, but he does, and VCF knew he does, and we all benefit from the fact that there are people like him out there. So I say it's totally reasonable that he writes them off as dead to him. That is a correct and rational and even constructive reaction for him.

As he says in the article, he now has much more robust conversations on this. That's constructive.

I think it is constructive to tell everyone too.

Nothing wrong with VCF having to work hard and earn back a good name. And nothing wrong with everyone watching and being aware if they fail to.

[ghaff]

Yes, they should have tried to give it back or, ideally, just not accepted in the first place absent a concrete plan. And, yes, it's worth understanding that not everyone (including university archives as well as volunteer organizations) has the level of enthusiasm about donated physical "stuff" as you do even when you think they really should for whatever reason.

However, as someone involved in an archiving project with a volunteer organization which changes people around a lot, I understand all too well that dealing with boxes of magazines like this is tough. If they're already scanned, great; the paper itself has very little value especially if you're not a library of some sort. If they're not, you're probably asking an organizations to spends multiple $10Ks to scan.

[gtirloni]

I'd expect people working in a organization focused on preserving or promoting vintage stuff to be the most enthusiastic about that material and handle it with great care.

My mom couldn't care less about computers and she called me to ask if I wanted to keep some floppy disks before she threw them out.

[ghaff]

>My mom couldn't care less about computers and she called me to ask if I wanted to keep some floppy disks before she threw them out.

And I've thrown out a ton of floppies and old games. You can't save everything just because it had some meaning to you once.

Enthusiastic or not, dealing with boxes and boxes of old magazines means spending lots of money and/or lots of time which is a high bar. (Though, as I wrote, they should have either just said no or returned it.)

[Brian_K_White]

Throwing out your own stuff, that was only ever yours, not merely given into your custody, has absolutely no bearing or relation to this story.

[ghaff]

I think you're way more optimistic about the record-keeping and level of organization of a group like this than I am.

[toast0]

I agree, but that also requires cataloging the donation somehow so that the donor's contact information is associated. If it all lived in the boxes until it was removed (however it was) then it would be easy to have said 'hey, we can't use this, and we can't store it, we're planning to rid ourselves of it, can you help us find it a new home?' Especially if the donor had placed contact info inside or on the boxes.

But there's lots of ways that information may not filter to the big pile of old magazines disintegrating in the salt air.