Special Forum Section For Manuals & Other Paperwork

[tabbyapple]

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[nolimits76]

To be super clear I am not associated with the site or moderator staff.

But my guess is this could be a potential legal (copyright) issue and collectively would consume lots of server storage space and bandwidth which would come at an increased cost.

This would be especially handy for older items where manuals aren’t easily accessible. However that too raises the question of who (likely multiple who’s) moderate what gets selected and doesn’t. Newer stuff can usually be retrieved on the manufacturer’s website.

On a side note, for years I have been a “pack rat” in regards to paperwork. Like many folks I keep a file cabinet full of stuff like auto, home, tax, legal, etc paperwork so it’s easily organized and accessible. I also started adding all the manuals for various electronics, home appliances, tools, equipment, etc. As you can imagine this becomes a lot in a short time and I am constantly maintaining. I am currently in the process of cleaning out, scanning and converting to electronic storage where it is more accessible and easier to maintain.

 

[tabbyapple]

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[engineer2]

Most hosting companies permit unlimited storage (within reason), so disk storage is not an issue.
Copyright is not really an issue unless the creator sells the manuals, which is rare. If a vendor complains, remove the manual.
I have file cabinets full of old manuals I would love to share. The difficulty is scanning them all.

 

[four.cycle]

"...Copyright is not really an issue unless the creator sells the manuals..."

17 U.S.C. § 107

I'll put out some feelers and see what I can find out.

 

[Dumber than lumber]

Most hosting companies permit unlimited storage (within reason), so disk storage is not an issue.
Copyright is not really an issue unless the creator sells the manuals, which is rare. If a vendor complains, remove the manual.
I have file cabinets full of old manuals I would love to share. The difficulty is scanning them all.

Scanning the manuals is a pain for just one or two people. As I recall google scanned hundreds of thousand (maybe millions) if books and publications, the ran character recognition on all the text.
Like we all know, they had a plan to use that “free” resource as another way to generate web traffic and clicks. Anyway, now is the time; but not sure as to the right place for this online library.

 

[engineer2]

GJ is not open to the public and many manuals are highly specialized. Many sites try to monetize manuals via advertising and/or getting your email address. Not sure what the best approach would be.

 

[four.cycle]

Internet Archive - free membership The Archive staff will see it's a manual and put it in the Manual Library, which has 2,826,625 items and a bunch of subcategories, some maintained by the Archive staff, some by others. The ITCL is part of this. I have scanned plenty of other manuals and put them in the Archive but not the ITCL.

(* please be sure to click on the little red heart at top of the page *)

 

[tabbyapple]

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[four.cycle]

It would be much simpler and less time consuming to simply make contact with someone at archive.org and mail the manuals to them and allow them to scan them. That way the highest quality end product is produced, which is easily searchable with conventional software.

The advantage to providing the documents to archive.org is that it is a free service. It does not cost anything to download material from their site. This "de-monetizes" the item, which is why I just shipped all of my tool catalogs to them. The original hard copies of those catalogs will now plummet in resale value, and be purchased only by those individuals who wish to own musty old tool catalogs and have a place to store them.

HERE is the most recent release of material I supplied to them.
Download it and run your searches. Works just fine.

 

[four.cycle]

Just be sure to mail them a check, or make your donations with your credit or debit card. They are not a "for profit" organization - they are all volunteers.

 

[tabbyapple]

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[four.cycle]

^ That particular volume was a reprint of the original and was already "cleaned up" with some sort of software.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. The information contained within any of those volumes is what people are after. I have thousands of catalog pages that are yellowed or stained - it doesn't make the information on the pages any less valid.

I suppose if one were inclined to "doctor up" the images to make them "better", that could be done. When dealing with volumes that are hundreds of pages long, however, time constraints might make that less than practicable.

And respectfully, I have to disagree with you: Making the items publicly available for free will, over time, "de-monetize" the market for these types of publications, which up until the advent of "Ebay" and other online selling platforms, had relatively no value at all other than to a very small group of collectors.

Certainly there will be a few collectors who will still be willing to pay crazy amounts of money for old publications, but they will be part of an ever-shrinking minority.

 

[tabbyapple]

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