More on manuals plus rescue

Jason Scott jason at textfiles.com
Wed Aug 19 06:20:48 CDT 2015


Combining both of your posts in a response, William.

My being involved in this Manuals Plus project came as a result of a large
number of people telling me that Manuals Plus was going out of business and
that there were a number of documents and manuals that were, if not rare or
unique, definitely hard to find in good condition. I'll be the first to say
that I am not aware of the situation or the full scope of such
documentation, but the calls were numerous enough that I took it seriously.
Once the items are moved to the neutral place, I'll be able to assist and
work with evaluating it.

In terms of waiting until the last minute, I had been on the phone with the
sole employee, Becky, since early this year. The situation at the business
was such that she was able to tell me that the items were destined to
eventually go away but that there was no obvious endpoint, as the owner had
been doing a number of sales or offerings to people as the business wound
down.

Harassment and threats and non serious offers had been coming into the
office at various points, so the owner was not particularly interested in
talking to outside third parties. It was only this past Wednesday, one week
ago, that Becky told me that they were now given the word that they were
absolutely shutting down and that everything needed to be out by the
beginning of the next week.

Believe me, I wish this was much more methodical and able to be evaluated
too. But we have essentially been given a little less than 72 hours to move
on this, so here I am, doing my best. I would love to have had more time to
reach out, but here we are, and there it is.

I'm not looking for sympathy based on the project parameters, or even
claiming that the project is particularly unique. I hold admiration and
respect for anyone who has to do this sort of work frequently. I'm working
the best I can with the knowledge that I have.
On Aug 19, 2015 12:03 AM, "William Donzelli" <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Are you serious? Jason is currently sweating his balls off trying to
> save at least a portion of a huge warehouse of unique documentation under
> an incredibly tight deadline.
>
> Just for the record, the Manuals Plus hoard is not, in any way, a
> bunch of "unique documentation". Test equipment docs are actually very
> common, and hoards of thousands of manuals are also fairly common.
>
> I will try to elaborate on the subject later, but I have had one
> helluva day...(in a mostly good way)...
>
> --
> Will
>


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