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I am taking advantage of lockdown(s) and scanning/imaging all old media to archive.org, but would like to donate the boxes when finished.

A bit like Donating old Computer Shopper Magazines

The Centre for Computing history say they want a list so they can choose. I'd rather just give it all away in one go, is there anywhere in the UK ? Old Computer media might be too specific a subject for a local library. I also realise some of the media maybe corrupted by now.

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    Generally speaking, any serious historical collection is going to want to choose what they think meaningful, rather than take a box of miscellaneous stuff.
    – another-dave
    Nov 4, 2020 at 14:09
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    Can't speak for UK institutions specifically, but museums, libraries, etc. are generally short on space, short on manpower, and (the root cause) short on money. So they'll try to focus their efforts items of a certain historical siginificance, especially if scans / images are already available online.
    – Michael Graf
    Nov 4, 2020 at 14:52
  • @another-dave that's too bad, because this is how places like that miss out on things they're looking for. Donors who are purging, and don't have the time to catalog and sort and cherry pick, so they want to donate the whole thing. And if they can't donate the whole thing, then more times than not, the "whole thing" ends up in a dumpster and landfill. Wheres these organizations of informed enthusiats know what they're looking for and a better entrance in to the disposal chain, and ideally without the time limits that the donor are under.
    – Will Hartung
    Nov 4, 2020 at 14:58
  • @WillHartung Exactly. If you want the rare stuff. Make it easy to donate. Otherwise Peoples other halfs will persuade them to throw out the lot including possible Rare items. Plenty of news articles highlighting this & we are not the experts, esp. if we inherit it. On the other hand I understand that they will not have the resources to store or process it, hence a question to see if there is any out there that can.
    – D.Price
    Nov 4, 2020 at 15:32
  • With magazines and other printed media in particular, I can see several reasons why interest might be low: first, there's already guaranteed to be a hard copy at the British Library, through legal deposit (cf bl.uk/legal-deposit), so the risk something will be lost forever is pretty low; second, there's likely a scanned copy online, so people looking for something will use that rather than look it up at a museum or library; and third, magazines and books generally don't make for good exhibits (rare old books excluded).
    – Michael Graf
    Nov 4, 2020 at 22:07

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We are a computer museum here in the Northwest, we were going to open up in August but unfortunately have had to push it forward because of the Covid. We are looking for magazines to put into our museum and also in the Internet Cafe. We would love to take them for our museum which is called Northwest Computer Museum/Workshops in Leigh. Website is www.nwcomputermuseum.org.uk and my email address is joe@nwcomputermuseum.org.uk.

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