Picofarad #7

November 2006

J. Lloyd Eaton Wants YOU

I had one of those moments during Worldcon. You know that feeling between when you've just had a terrific idea and when you realize how much of your spare time it's going to absorb? That was where I was when I went up to one of the representatives of the J. Lloyd Eaton collection after their presentation and offered to give them my collection of filk tapes. "And," I added, routing a new thought around the judgement filters and straight to my mouth, "since most of them don't have liner notes, I can write you some footnotes on what I know about the sources and background for each song!"

Then I went home and counted 90 tapes, not including the ones I can't find right now.

But I'm going through with it, and so should you if you feel an urge to donate. Because here are the main things we learned at that presentation:

  1. The Eaton collection is the world's oldest and biggest collection of sf.
  2. Its mission is to collect one not just of every book, but every edition of every book, every zine, every publication of any kind.
  3. It has an acquisition budget of $30,000 a year to accomplish this on.

Point #3 slipped out after they said they weren't supposed to give a number-- and I do believe it was accidental-- but it's out now. If you have a pile of old books, old zines, even a stack of old con newsletters, they're interested. I mean, they were perfectly happy to accept copies of Picofarad #5 and #6 afterward. They really do mean it when they say they want one of everything. The contact address is jdree@ucr.edu.

Incidentally, if anyone could give me some documentation on what old filk tapes are going for these days, I could really use the tax break if I can convince the IRS to give it to me. I mean, I want to send Eaton some songbooks too, and I'm still using my own copies...

Next: Scintillations


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