[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.

[Brian_K_White]

I am very clearly agreeing with Jason that the organization has demonstrated itself to be entirely disorganized. The opposite of optimistic.

I have addressed the excuse of turnover already. It isn't one.

But even if it were an excuse, that still goes poof when the organization discovers that they dropped a ball that someone else trusted them with and handled something so poorly, and tries to deny any cuplability and even tries to bash Jason back, instead of saying "Shit, we didn't know because we're all new here since then. We feel terrible that this happened!"

That would cost zero cents to have done, but it was still too much.