Warbird Information Exchange

August,

Point well taken regarding my museum remark. I should have been more specific, the duplicates, of whatever medium, could be donated to a historical preservation group and the negatives, originals, etc. could be passed down to the next torch bearer. I have just such a situation going on right now with the McCook Army Air Base Historical Society in Nebraska. The son of a veteran who served at McCook has been generous enough to share photos his dad took during his time at McCook with the Society. We have copies of many of his photos that were given to us with only one condition, that they be used to further the goals of the Society in our preservation efforts. He is also considering what to do with the negatives and original photos, and I suspect that we will be involved in their ultimate disposition. I would love to share some of them with the WIX family (many B-29 photos that have never been published) but that is an issue that we first must work out with the donor. Nevertheless, they've been preserved, and that is the first step. Having you post all these pictures just spreads the preservation out over a large area!

Thanks again,
Scott

Yeah, I agree with all of that. We have others like Zane (Ztex) and Eric (Airic) on this forum who also are custodians of large personal collections of original (meaning the real piece of film that was in the camera) aviation photos, and we have common issues with respect to best practices in preservation, scanning, publishing, etc. We should form a little SIG. It is an opportune time because, as we are almost daily reminded, a key generation of aviation people is currently passing from the scene and a lot of old albums, slides and negatives are in imminent peril out there.

August

Back in June we were helping Gary with Ol'927 and had visitors come out to the hangar for a visit. The guest of honor was one of the photographers at the North American Dallas plant during the war. He brought a fantastic photo album/scrapbook of pictures and other items that he had taken during the war. It's just such material that we need to work to preserve--in his case he had a plan for where his material was to go. On the other hand, during one of the changes of ownership of the old Convair plant in Fort Worth, truckloads of photos, blueprints, and other material went straight to the incinerators. It's sad that we can't save it all, but every old photo I see here makes me smile.

Scott