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Re: Byte Magazine archived?
Chris Morse wrote:
Hi, this isn't Apple II specific, though my motivations for it are,
does anyone know if Byte Magazine, especially issues from the 70's and
80's, are available electronically? As far as I know, there is no
official archive.
I have had serious thoughts of trying to locate old copies in
libraries. They would probably be found in some University libraries,
though access to them may not be open (ie, you may need to be a
registered student to get into the library.) I live in the Raleigh,
NC area and I think UNC at Chapel Hill has a stash. Same goes with
some of the other Apple II related magazines - I know Nibble has been
officially scaned and is for sale (great!) it would be nice to see
other magazines too.. Especially those with program listings, etc..
As time marches on, we may end up losing some of these magazines. I'm
sure universities will eventually dump them, most likely in the
garbage or perhaps into the university furnace, to produce energy to
make up for recent (and future) budget cuts.
You make a very good point.
Magazines, especially "specialty" magazines like Byte, are regarded as
disposable by many libraries.
When shelf space runs short, they go to storage, and when storage gets
crowded, they go away.
That's exactly what happened around 2005 to the Byte collection of the
King County Library in Bellevue, WA. I checked out some issues once,
and a few months later, they were gone.
They did offer an article copy service from another library, but that
is a far cry from being able to browse.
The reason there is no official Byte archive is that Byte didn't die
anywhere near it's peak as a hobbyist magazine--it went through years
of decline as a corporate stepchild, losing all relevance (unless you
were an IT manager with too much time on your hands). ;-( As a result,
it just faded away, with no one to mourn it--or preserve it's glorious
past.
-michael
NadaNet 3.0 for Apple II parallel computing!
Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/
"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."