Where shoud I will my UFO Collection?

Serious question. As is common, I am the only one in my family who is at all interested in UFOs or any of these types of issues. I have about 250 books related to UFOs, (and Yes, I've read the large majority of them, many more than once.) from the original self-published works of Kenneth Arnold to many of Adamski's contactee books from the fifties to more modern treatments from Communion to UFOs and the National Security State. There is a wide variety of abductee/contactee material, most of the Kenneth Arnold and Donald Keyhoe books, and even a good selection of Phil Klass and Donald Menzel stuff. Some are even valuable, such as the Meier Contact coffee table books that regularly sell for hundreds of dollars on Ebay. Many are quite rare, though perhaps not valuable. It's not what you would call comprehensive, but it certainly is representative of the books published over the last sixty years. Couple these with another 200 books on ancient civilizations and the paranormal plus Templar Illumaniti Da Vinci Code material and it is a fairly interesting collection in the right hands.

I'd hate to see this collection split up or thrown into a book sale. I would like to find a place that could benefit from it. I don't mean an individual (so spare us being cute), but a foundation, a library dedicated to the subject, or an organization that was serious about preserving this material, perhaps scanning it into machine readable files that could be placed on the Internet, that sort of thing. Do any of you know of such an organization that would be willing to take this on--a few decades from now, I would hope? Thanks for any serious suggestions.

No, I don't. But there should be. I am not ashamed that I bumped this thread, with nothing to offer.

Is there no one at ATS that knows of a way that these books can go on being a resource? Is there no one that cares?

I am growing old myself, and I would hate to think that those things I hold worthy will go to the trash, or the highest bidder, when I pass.

Come on ATS, this thread deserves atention.

Originally posted by NGC2736
I am growing old myself, and I would hate to think that those things I hold worthy will go to the trash, or the highest bidder, when I pass.

The highest bidder isn't so bad if you have decendents who would prefer to prosper from the bids!

Schuyler, a noble cause, for sure. Before your years are numbered, you might be able to sway some of your family on to the subject, so they can appreciate the books?

My local UFO organisation is small and while they have a collection of books, I don't think that access is readily available to it. They sometimes receive donations from deceased estates, etc. Maybe you could find your favourite, local UFO group and offer them the lot?

In any case, I'd prefer to see you typing here a lot longer! So don't go anywhere in a hurry, no unexpected trips into the next life (or unlife - whatever you believe), please. Someone has to knock off the tin-foil hats and bring sanity to the madness that occasionally gets bumped to the top of this forum.

You may want to consider simply donating your collection to your local library. Even if your local didn't use all the books/materials from your collection, they would more than likely distribute the materials around to other libraries accross the country.

While nothing is perfect you may also want to consider the theosophical society:

www.theosociety.org...

or the Edgar Cayce society:

www.edgarcayce.org...

Spiderj

Hmmm..... There's always the Museum in Roswell....... Not sure if they would be interested though.

You could contact the Smithsonian. I am certain that by the time you die your collection will be quite notable. Do they even have a UFO section? Worth checking out anyway. Take care! And Don't give up, your ship will come in one starry night when you least expect it.

...large collection...I like many of the suggestions..You seem to wish that the collection remains together...Preferably by another very similar personality like yourself,...Only ...say younger,...healthyish...someone that will ,..if anything expand on it with the energy that you did...But,.. to be honest...I really like the "scanning"...for everyone to read,...at will..over the net....That would be great..Get a college interested.?.You would need an army to do it ??......no ?

I just saw the "a few decades from now"...I thought you might be really old like that guy in your picture..You are worryed that far in advance ? about your UFO collection ?.....hummm......I don't have anything to pass on.....heck,...in 20 yrs the answers we all seek ,.....may well be answered...(you know...like something really lands..and stays there for all to see in broad daylight)....I hope so..oh well...be asured we will think of something...we have enough time............i can't find the spell check ??

Originally posted by schuyler
Do any of you know of such an organization that would be willing to take this on--a few decades from now

Consider donating it to the libraries of MUFON or CUFOS (although both face financial problems).

Rare material should be preserved. E.g. it's such a pity that rich archives, such as those of APRO (one of the premier UFO groups in the 1960s-1970s with huge amounts of data) is unreachable and for every practical purpose is considered lost.

Shoot, I'd donate it to the Amigos personally. Keep it in the family so to speak. Maybe the Clinton library, then there would be something worth reading in that damn trailer.

Although they've been getting some flak for it, GOOGLE, you may have heard, is attempting to create a virtual on-line library of the world's literature.

Copyright and other issues aside, preserving your collection in digital perpetuity is the noblest of solutions, IMHO, simply because it will give the greatest breadth and depth of access to all who desire and are able to do so. It also may help to avoid any potential future Faranheit 451 nastiness that may transcend after you've dearly departed.

In any case, legal issues are pressing, though Google Books is definitely deep-pockets lawyer weighted, and may prevail in the end. In the meantime, they are aggressively proceeding with a "Scan First - Ask Questions Later" methodology. Chances are many of the works in your library are already 'in the system' (but I understand some works are unavailable due to author/publisher wranglings.)

One more thing: I have a friend who works for Microsoft. "In the bowels" of Microsoft actually, and, at a party recently, he had something very interesting to say over his fifth or sixth cocktail (but who's counting?): We were talking about all the money Billy Gates has and continues to make. We were figuring out stuff like, "Gates makes more money with each breath he takes than this whole room of partygoers make together in a whole year" - stuff like that. Anyway - I asked him what the heck does Gates DO with all that money, anyway? Well, after the obligatory foundation give-away cash, his various mansion toys, he still has billions to burn, right?

This guy told me that Gates is actually on a personal, highly ambitious quest. a mandate really, to acquire, digitize, and store as much of the world's intellectual property as he can get his hands on. Unlike Google, he has no intention of going public with the collection, at least not yet, and he is keeping the entire operation very secret and 'subterranean' - literally. Gates seemingly has huge 'server farms' in the lower basement levels of some of the buildings on the sprawling MSFT Redmond campus completely dedicated to storing these works, of which there are, apparently, millions to the E0x. Everything from scanned Da Vinci manuscripts and sketches to original works of art and even pictures and dossiers of millions of average people. Now why on Earth would he want a picture of my dead grandmother?

Anyway - sorry to go off-track a bit, but my thinking is that you set aside a few words in your will to have your entire collection boxed up and shipped to the Microsoft Skunk Works upon your unfortunate demise. Send it anonymously and, well, there'll be no one to return it to, and knowing how His Highness appreciates literature, it's bound to end up "in a good home" - after he converts the ones he wants to bits and bytes, of course...

Good luck, my friend...

[edit-link fix]

[edit on 10/3/2007 by Outrageo]

The world's largest science fiction collection is at the University of California - Riverside branch, in Riverside county, California. Here is a link to that library, which also contains the email address of the librarian in charge of that collection. If she cannot use your UFO collection, she will certainly know who can.

eaton-collection.ucr.edu...


If this suggestion does not help, let us know and I'll do some more digging.

[edit on 10/3/2007 by Uphill]

I've wanted to solicit donations of UFO material to go to my local small town library for some time now. Your thread just gave me the opportunity to talk about that.

I was very disappointed to find my local library has all of 4 books. 'The Roswell Incident' Moore/Berlitz, 'UFO's Explained' Philip Klass, and two of Whitley Strieber's books.

My local library would probably not be the best place for your entire UFO collection.

Maybe you could check with your local library and see if they have any UFO books. Surely any decent place your entire UFO collection goes will have the basic UFO books already so you could sort those out and donate them to your local library.

Anyway my local library has nothing and surely other libraries must be just as deficient, but that's something people could change by donating a few books to the local library.

reply to post by lost_shaman


I wish your idea could be implemented with sufficient confidence, but alas, it is not so simple.

The problem is that once you donate books to your local public library, you release all rights of possession and the library is free to do with them as they wish.

There is no assurance or guarantee, and none will be provided, that your donated works will be placed on the library's shelves. Instead, the library is free to re-donate, sell, or otherwise discard of your donated works at their own discretion and prerogative.

Most public libraries have periodic book sales where they sell old, tattered, or unused works to the public, often at only pennies on the dollar. Some of the larger branches even have full-time used book stores on the premises from which they sell old and donated volumes. Where I live, I've seen the local libraries take entire boxes of donated books from the giver's car directly into the used book store, and put right on the shelves with a little sticker for $1.

It's revenue-generator for them.

Schuyler's tomes are not guaranteed a perpetual audience through this method, as meritorious as it may seem...

I thank you all most heartily for all the suggestions and will follow up several. I will also follow up on OCR scanning of particularly the older ones where copyright isn't an issue and they are the most fragile.

I must concur with Outrageo about local public libraries. Having spent my entire career in public libraries I am loathe to criticize them for they are fine institutions which do not often receive the credit they deserve. However, my library sends most donations to the book sale. If they manage to find a valuable item, they will sell it on ebay or amazon rather than place it in the collection. Turnover is important to libraries so if a book does not circulate they tend to discard it. And frankly, placing the stickers, property stamps, and barcodes on a book renders it nearly worthless from a monetary standpoint. I have several ex-library books in the collection only for the content.

At one point I had the vague and naive notion that I could collect ALL the UFO literature, or at least a ALL the monographs. However, I soon found that my income could not support such a habit, not could my abode afford the space. There are a couple of books that speak to this. I'll list them in case anyone is interested.

The UFO literature; a comprehensive annotated bibliography of books in English by Richard Michael Rasmussen. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Publishers, 1985, 263 pages. He really does try to cover everything published and lists 1,093 books as of 1985. You could probably double that number today.

Another quite comprehensive work is UFOs and the extraterrestrial contact movement; a bibliography by George M. Eberhart. Methuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1986, in 2 volumes, 1298 pages. Eberhart deals primarily with the contactee movement. He includes periodical articles as well and has listed over 15,000 sources.

Eberhart's earlier work is A geo-bibliography of anomalies; primary access to observation of UFOs, ghosts, and other mysterious phenomena. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980, 1114 pages. This is a little more difficult to use because it is indexed by geography. An average page has 25 entries so it has about 25,000 entries altogether, not all of them covering UFOs.

These reference books are massive tomes representing a tremendous amount of bibliographic work, all likely done before the advent of personal comuters and database software for them. This gives you an idea on how vast the literature is. I would guess that my book collection covers between 10-15% of the English books on the subject. Still a long way to go.

That is a "Pickle" schu'... might it not be possible for posterity's sake to maybe leave them to a "caretaker" entity? The Missus' upon my demise is executrix and will be instructed to "give" my stuff to her tribe's people.

Are you considering divesting yourself of the work before you "shift gears"? That might be a way to have some peace of mind about it...

Take the dog out schu'... legacy is a serious real thing. Old-dogs and new tricks are not always mutually exclusive. That "stack" should not be split muchacho' - I'm bettin' it's way-phat data. I'm thinkin' you are dialed-in-to-that. Too bad you couldn't "leave it everywhere" autonomous of supervision.

You are a smart man. You will figure it out...

Luck and respect,

Vic

reply to post by schuyler


You should do what people do who want to protect the integrity of their assets AND assure their preservation when they are no longer able to do so themselves (e.g.: death, incarceration, incapacity).

DEED them "In Trust" to someone else. You can create a trust for $0.00, to protect real estate, collections, or any other asset.

You deed the stuff over to whomever you choose, REVOCABLY (in case you change your mind, or they are unable/unwilling/undeserving in the future), and YOU keep possession!

Simple, right?

You're welcome.

(Want to show your gratitude for this "free" advice? Send me a "spare" of your Vallee or Arnold original editions/self-publications. )

Another bit of "free" advice is to be discriminating about determining what constitutes the "Body or Corpus" of your collection of "legitimate UFO research/UFOlogy." If there's a bunch of "junk" mixed in, your intended Trust's "Beneficiary" (that's the person you will be holding these things for) might not consider it worth his/her/its time to sort through it all when the time comes.

Many foundations decline such trusts because of the potential liabilities or costs attendant to ownership of the Corpus of the "Estate."

You can also consider alternate, succeeding, subsequent or co-beneficiaries if you have multiple people or preferences.

Good luck. See you in Magonia.

jw

I'll take them off your hands