Would you like to own EVERY SINGLE Model Engineer edition ever published?

ols PM me or post

Hi,

My father, Peter Clark, was a REAL collector of model engineering and railroad memorabilia

That includes a complete archive of every single ME ever published.

I need to find a deserving home for these. Some are the formally bound annual summaries. Others are the actual magazines personally bound into folders.

So does anyone want them? Free to a good home Though a contribution to charity would be appreciated. Pls PM me or post here. Chris C

Could you please add your location/nearest town ? May help folk.

Excellent suggestion.

Southwold, Suffolk

IP18 6BH

Surely it would be valuable to the editors / owners / management of Model Engineer to have an archive of all issues for reprint, reader queries, etc. Maybe even to scan it all to digital format for a historical record.

A lot of history there in that collection.

It would be best if it could go to a ME club so that it can be used as reference by as many people as possible.

Wow what an offer hope you find someone deserving

The company has full sets of all its magazines.

The work involved in manually unbinding, scanning and rebinding 4,500 magazines in various formats is mind boggling... allow just ten minutes per issue and it's about six month's work without any tea breaks...

Personally, it would be nice to own a full set of ME but I have enough trouble storing about 35-40 years' worth as well as of my nearly complete set of MEW!

Neil

Reading this forum post, I am reminded that many old, valuable and rare documents and items have been thrown away and are still being destroyed by well meaning relatives while clearing a deceased persons property.

They get thrown away simply because the person doing the clearing has no idea what they are looking at.

Unfortunately there is no way of stopping this happening and so many out of print reference books and old magazines will disappear unless they are recorded in someway for future generations.

I'm afraid copyright issues will remain a problem in this respect.

Neil

If they are still available I can take them of your hands :D I have been trying to make a complete collection and this would be a nice shortcut. My existing issues I would then pass on individually, or in years or however anybody wanted them.

Hi Ade,

Yes they are available! I'll PM you with my contact details.

Chris

As fart as posterity is concerned, this sholdn't be an issue, from Wikipedia:

"The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003^[52] restates Section 15 of the Copyright Act 1911,^[53] that one copy of every book (which includes pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, sheet music and maps) published there must be sent to the British Library; five other libraries (the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, Cambridge University Library, the National Library of Scotland, the library of Trinity College, Dublin and the National Library of Wales) are entitled to request a free copy within one year of publication, a process which they normally coordinate jointly through Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries. The 2003 Act set out provisions for the deposit of non-print works. This legislation was updated with the introduction of secondary legislation, The Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013,^[54] which make provision for the legal deposit of works published online or offline in formats other than print, such as websites, blogs, e-journals and CD-ROMs. Social media content is included in the legislation, but not private message sent via social media platforms. Pure video streaming websites are also excluded from the legislation.[55"

I would think a scanner with double sided paper handling and a document feeder would ease the digital archive workload especially if the spines could be guillotined off and the source magazines written off. It does sometimes seem that copyright ownership is a dog in the manger position, unless revenue can be generated what is the point of copyright? If the digitisation task was undertaken then controlling the distribution would be the problem but with digital rights management I am sure a revenue stream could be generated. As some of the original paper copies are now over 100 years old I am sure they are becoming a smaller resource with each passing year. Some will fall apart or succumb to bugs and rodents others will be binned by the house clearance crew. A complete paper collection takes a lot of space to store and finding what you want can be a problem. As many of us have access to a scanner perhaps we could have a type of crowd funding project where many people scan a few copies from their collection in an agreed format and donate them to my time to host at a minimum cost as the bulk of the work has been done for altruistic reasons by the ME community. The only hurdle then would be the copyright for the last 70 years.

Mike

Hi All

No need to cut open the magazines or books.

There are many commercial and open source based machines available.

**LINK**

Regards

John

So the complete collection has been handed over to a very happy recipient.

Very good news.

Many thanks to Chris. The collection is wonderful. I shall be quiet for may years reading. As I have to clear my old attempt at getting all the copies of ME to help make space for the estimated 20 foot of required bookshelf ! I will list what I have and pass on single of multiple copies to any good homes that want them. Will take a short while to sort them out.

I doubt any of those would cope with close-bound magazines. I suspect it would be near impossible to scan many of the official copies without the risk of damage.

Neil

Plus you really need an automate page turner and something that holds the pages flat to produce scans worthy of being 'official'.

I've known people who would go that far staples bent open every page removed scanned or back then photo copied and all returned to the same staples ever so neatly.

I bet they wouldn't be so neat when they'd done it about 4,500 times!