89 replies to this topic

[BrianMcQueen]

Nobody was paying attention to this lot on eBay I guess.  Perfect mix of the seller's bad listing practices and my willingness to hunt led me to this purchase.  It's got some issues, but it's well worth the price of entry.  I'll post up better pictures when it arrives in my mailbox.

[david i]

Knowledge is power.  That catalogue download should help many learn

 

 

-d

[BrianMcQueen]

Which catalogue download?

[david i]

Which catalogue download?

 

I forgot you are not much on facebook.

 

Let's see...

 

An earth shattering offer for collectors of old pens. Downloadable free copies of 600 Fountain Pen catalogues, brochures, repair manuals and more. Please help BETA-TEST the download page I'm hosting at my website. Let me know what you think of the commentary. Huge learning material for all who like old pens. Please let me know if good function or problems with the page, the links, the download itself and with my text (Proofing always appreciated on a busy day). Note the Waterman pic is from my hard copy Waterman catalogue, just for art's sake. All the material is public domain or undeclared (Sheaffer has not objected to the long time sharing of Targa catalogues, for example). If anything private and thus copyrightable (such as a modern magazine copy like Fountain Pen Journal or Pen World) leaked into the downloadable folder, please let me know, and I will promptly remove.

 

 

Catalogue Download Page Hosted at Vacumania

 

 

Could get interesting...

 

-d

[Roger W.]

A secretary nib for $10 is pretty good.

 

Roger W.

[david i]

Yep. I am cheerfully jealous.

 

-d

[John Jenkins]

The publishing of the PCA library is a morally bankrupt act that I can not abide.

 

This is my final post on this board.

[david i]

I do thank Jon Veley for inspiring the download. I do understand some are not happy about it.

[Roger W.]

The library is an interesting thing.  Early on the PCA collected up some nice stuff and made it available cheaply as black and white photocopies, wonderful technology that.  Well that is what I knew when I met Pat Mohan at his house and he graciously pulled out everything for me to see including original color catalogs.  WOW!  They were cool and things were just going digital so I collaborated with Pat to make great digitized copies and sell those.  Never a huge market let me assure you.  So the PCA saw the library as a lure to get members.  Probably a misstep on their part but, this whole internet thing is a little hard to figure out that you are always doing the right thing.  The thing that is getting away from most of you all is that research is a tiny fraction of our hobby done by a select few so this is really much ado about nothing.  Which gets us down to what things we are doing today.  The PCA is a great body to attract pen related items to a central place to be shared.  It's a 501©3 so it is not profit motivated beyond any non for profit generating enough funds to carry out its various missions.  David's being a bit bombastic as usual but, nobody from the PCA should be upset at this.  I say this as the one that made the PCA a 501©3 and reincorporated it 10 years back so I'm as close to the PCA as anybody. The library should be available to anyone that actually wants to do research as there are far too few of us to start with.  David, I'm sure, has gotten more interest in the PCA library than anybody else in the past two years - maybe we don't thank him but, I'm sure there is a lot of truth in this. The other thing the PCA has been pretty good at is a nice color hobby magazine.  Without people researching there are no articles to put in the magazine.  So let's get people doing research and writing well documented articles.  I'm going to try and reach out to folks to get more things digitized for the PCA Library.  I firmly believe there is a lot of untapped ephemera out there that us researchers would give an eye tooth for to have access.  Oh, somebody decided to give me a position - I'll mention it after my name.

 

Roger E. Wooten

PCA Librarian

[David Nishimura]

None of us are going to be around forever.

We've already lost so much knowledge, between senior collectors dying, oral accounts unrecorded, and websites abandoned unarchived. It only makes sense to have a central repository for the field, maintained by a permanent organization. All to the good to have backup repositories, to be sure, but vital to have something that will outlast any one individual, or any for-profit partnership -- something that serves pen collecting as a whole.

We *need* the PCA.

It may not be perfect, but it is essential.

[Rick Krantz]

David's downloadable file treasure is great. 

 

It also helped me recognize that I have some stuff that isn't in there, and some better quality material than what is available in there. 

 

So let's just consider that for a moment, that people now have total access to the material, and some come forward and say... hey... I got that but mines in better condition, do you want me to send you a copy? 

 

I'm going to forward a good color scan of at least a few items that will make the collection better. 

 

In addition, I will be sure to provide the PCA with the same material, they can update their version as well. 

 

I think this is a tuning point, and sure, not everyone is going to love how it came about, but there are many others that do. You have to appreciate the new interest in this material a lot of people didn't know was out there. 

[Rick Krantz]

David I,  we need to separate this thread, and probably break it at the Download part, give it a new topic. just a thought. 

[BrianMcQueen]

I agree that we should separate this thread.

[BrianMcQueen]

The pen arrived today and is a smooth black plastic, non-WD pen.  Did they make Secretaries in black plastic, or is this likely a 7-30 that's been fitted with a Secretary nib?

[Roger W.]

Rick;

 

I think it is great for the material to be out there.  I think we need to get this stuff to the PCA for its ability to outlive us all.  Thanks,

 

Roger W.

[Hugh]

Congatulations Roger, I'm sure you will do a great job. The move to open up the PCA library is positive as is actively seeking new material, that this may well end up in a number of different locations is also positive. What's already in the library will now exist well beyond all of us by virtue of it's ease of distribution, the challenge is now new material and upgrades as Rick mentioned.

 

The PCA still has a lot of work to do raise it's profile, take David I.'s Facebook group with 3000 members in next to no time compared to PCA at <1000 after how long? Pennant in digital form is a must, I found it relatively expensive for what it offered with overseas postage, it also allows easy sales to non members who may only want the odd article of interest. Again in 3 editions I didn't find any articles of great interest to myself, I can't be alone in that. Promoting Jon Veley within the organisation was an error, that should be fixed.

 

Regards

Hugh

[david i]

Several points of merit to explore in this thread.  At some point, I will split away the Library discussion from the Secretary chat.  If I can next couple  days I will. I'm bit swamped at work. Had some nice news at work  too, but that will wait.   Though the actual split takes a few seconds, I want to play with structuring it to work for future chat. Might start fresh thread and incorporate the above comments as sourced quotes.  At very least, I note that  divorces see friends migrate variably with the divorcing parties.  So, let's see...

 

John Jenkins was an expected though unfortunate collateral damage in all this.  He of course will be welcomed back if he decides to play here.

 

Growing the knowledge and the involvement in our hobby is a definite bonus from releasing this info via dropbox.   Though data gathering is imperfect, based on prior experience and long discussion with many in the PCA I believe that ten times as many people have had heavy exposure to the useful company info in the data library during the last four days as  had exposure the last 15 years via the PCA.  

 

Roger is correct that most people will not dive into the downloaded info the way a mere  fraction of a percent of those of us in the hobby have done before,  but with instant access on one's own hard drive, perhaps more people will explore.

 

There was the claim in last year's thread (pinned) that disrespecting proprietary rights to public domain access (the PCA's firewall on old pen catalogue copies) will harm willingness of others to contribute.  Have at it, folks. I will note that two days after offering the Library, a collector- happy with the release- sent me a cache of PDFs about Cross, offered publicly now for the first time in that same Dropbox offering. That anecdote argues that my release of the Library encourages the release of fresh material, rather than squelches it.

 

Jon Veley's seemingly psychotic  and overtly hateful tirade against Dave Armstrong (innocent bystander and accidental catalyst), Paul Erano (who was never anything but kind to Jon) and me ultimately did turn out to be ironically self-fulfilling in its more paranoid seeming elements.  All the better.

 

We have I think made a strong case that claims about proprietary rights to public domain digital material do not prove true, which was the lesson explored in the thread last year accidentally started by Dave Armstrong.

How to grow hobby activity will be a chat of merit. That said, a Rodney King "Can't we all get along"  under a "single tent" likely won't play, so long as that which wants to be the single tent has major baggage.  Purging that baggage will be more important than "can't we all get together". Clearly disparate views can be offered on this

 

The PCA at very least needs to do some functional outreach. It is funny though sad that I personally reach far more collectors of old pens regularly than does this 20+ year old organization.  Perhaps you guys can buy out the desperate-to-sell Tom Zoss. His list is a pale shadow of what it was, but it has some brand recognition still... perhaps. Even Radio Shack found a buyer recently.

 

As many have noted, the Pennant has taken a major step back in function, a point again I acknowledge can be disputed.  Talking among several key players, including those still quite supportive of the PCA, it is noted that core academic articles there of late are near copies of articles already posted on the internet. Old news.  Though I am friendly with and well admire some of the pen restorers giving articles of late, with top quality pen-fix books available for $40, consuming big chunks of page count with pics of resacing a Vac or Snork is of questionable merit.   Then there's  the inevitable fluff with page upon page of pen show reviews that all read the same.  Even wanting to have print-in-hand (I advocate this of course) in an age when much can be found on the internet, stable information pages could be moved online freeing more pages for fresh collecting material, if there were fresh collecting material being offered.  Weird that after having had an illegible PENnant cover, the latest issue's cover looks cloned from Paul's Fountain Pen Journal. 

General consensus is that Fountain Pen Journal at 8 months is within 100 subscriptions of PENnant's count. Huge advertising.  Momentum. Run by one guy not an entire Board, and that one guy does nearly nothing online.  His friend though has helped a bit on that front.

 

PCA needs to regroup. Purge that which harms its public persona. Explore functional outreach.

 

"Central Source" has limited value in the internet age.  My online access with information likely will last as long as PCA.  If I am hit by truck, the Dropbox of articles will continue. The Board and FB Group will be willed. Webhosting for FPB and Vacumania is dirt cheap, the latter offering legacy information potential if necessary.   PCA might be a decent repository of information, but it will hardly be necessary. Can it find a way to transcend having a claim only to "necessary"? Time will tell.

 

More later. Work to do.

 

regards

 

-d

[david i]

Last year the PCA's Voice was mad at innocent bystander Dave Armstrong whom he'd believed had uploaded public domain catalogues also hosted by the PCA to an archive site, and he challenged Dave to offer other public domain material the PCA could in turn upload. The  diatribe  and challenge were bizarre, because Dave had uploaded nothing anywhere and merely had was happy to have  found some pen material at archive.org.    So, now my Dropbox folder of public domain material has material not found in the PCA library, an entire folder of Cross material. I cannot help but wonder if the PCA's voice will refuse to have it  taken into the PCA's library, since it originally was hosted elsewhere?   That we could play with. Of course, independent permission can be obtained, but that's a whole 'nother story...

 

-d

[JonSzanto]

I, for one, am sorry to see John Jenkins go. It bothers me even more to see a valued member be considered nothing more than "collateral damage", but - of course - it doesn't matter.

[david i]

I, for one, am sorry to see John Jenkins go. It bothers me even more to see a valued member be considered nothing more than "collateral damage", but - of course - it doesn't matter.

 

Hi Jon,

Ah, the lack of non-verbal cues on the internet strikes again.

 

John to me indeed is not "nothing more than 'collateral damage'".

 

We go way back and have had a multifaceted involvement in pen collecting.

 

Offered with wry resignation, my  comment had referred to process, not to  personal feelings.

 

regards

 

David