This is a serious question, but I suspect that the technical expertise
needed to retrieve analog signals from obsolete media will be beyond
most libraries, whether or not they collect technical manuals. It's the
machinery and the expertise to use it that counts. Fortunately there are
commercial firms that do this. We recently hired one to retrieve--quite
successfully--the signal from two 50-year-old wire recordings. Now
digital signals, that's another, far more difficult problem.
Clifford Scheiner wrote:
>
> Do any libraries maintain collections of technical manuals and repair
> guides for old information related equipment?
> I can see this being important as companies go out of business and
> technologies become obsolete. I see a lot of working Edison cylinder
> players, but not many drives for 8 inch CPM floppy diskettes.
> I suspect that in the near future a number of literary bequests will
> be collections of old floppy disks and magnetic tapes, but who will be
> able to maintain the machines needed to play them?
> C.J. Scheiner
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