17 Jul
2005
17 Jul
'05
8:39 p.m.
On Sun, 2005-07-17 at 18:57 +0100, Tony Duell wrote:
That really surprises me - I've never had a problem since I was there,
and actively encourage people to come along if they want information for
their own purposes; as you say it's no use if it's just locked away in a
room.
a billion
dollars for doing nothing. Museums go off and do their stuff
and the world never sees the results (if any) publicly. It frustrates
This is something that annoys me too. Muesums acquire large collections
of machines, software and documentation which then seems to be impossible
to access. When I used to volunteer at Bletchley, I was not allowed to
look at their documentation collection. OK, so I wanted some of the
information to repair my own machines, but so what? I was not going to
remove manuals permanently, or even temporarily. I was not going to
damage the manuals. I just wanted to look something up. On this list there are people who will pull one of
their machines apart
to check some detail (be it mechanical, like 'which way round does this
connector go?' or electronic 'what sort of signal should I be seeing on
pin 4 of this chip?' I have never met a museum that will do anything like
that.
Well I certainly have done on many an occassion with Bletchley's
machines following public (and private) queries :-) The only cases where
it's difficult tends to be with active display machines or with larger
items tucked away in storage (as it can need several people to move them
plus decent clear space to actually look at them!)
I don't believe in these things being locked away where they don't serve
any useful purpose - in an ideal world 90% of the collection would be on
public display (whilst the remaining 10% was being worked on), with
public access to the documentation / software archive - and active
swapping around of stuff with other museums and private collectors would
be encouraged. Problem is that we don't own any of the buildings at
Bletchley, so at present we can only use what public space we're given -
but hopefully one day...
cheers
Jules