Some of the catalogs listed in Ed Sprankle's database are not in my
possession at this time [ref. 040825 MMDigest].  I know they exist,
or did at one time.  What I took from his shop was about 12 feet of
loose-leaf binders, and I assumed that was everything on his list.
I hope that the missing ones are still at his house, probably on
his bookshelves, and haven't developed legs and crept off into the
darkness.  The next time I'm at his house I'll get whatever is there
and update the list.

There has been quite a lot of interest in huge blocks of the material:
for instance, the complete set of Wurlitzer catalogs, all the nickelodeon
rolls, and so on.  Frankly, I wasn't anticipating this sort of response
and haven't figured out how to fill requests for 10 blocks of 5,000
pages.  (Well, we don't have that many requested pages yet, but it
looks probable.)

We have a nice commercial duplexing copier, which will handle requests
for a few hundred pages, but not 50,000!  My price of a nickel per page
assumed a relatively small number of requests that I would provide as
a service, at less than cost.  Clearly this project has to be re-thought.

I'm open to suggestions as to how to handle a large number of copies.
A couple of thoughts about this:  Scan all the material and put it on
CD;  make a subscription list and have a copying house like Kinko's
make selected groups of catalogs.

Scanning to images sounds like a good idea until you plug in the fact
that Ed's database counts up over 23,000 pages.  That still may be the
best idea, but it won't happen very fast, and will probably wear out
several scanners.  I plan to scan all the material eventually, a several
year project, I'm sure.  Some of Ed's copies are not very good quality
and will benefit from a little processing, such as increasing the
contrast, suppressing background fuzz, etc.  A few will take major
processing to be useable.

Keep in mind that all this material was for Ed's personal use and was
not necessarily in the best format or quality.  Ed was always ready to
provide information to those he felt deserved it, but never planned on
making any of it public.  That was an idea that gradually evolved after
his death.  Our plan was that the material would be available for
research, with maybe requests for a few copies of specific catalogs.
Demand has moved the project out of the service category into a more
commercial endeavor.  Suggestions are welcome for how to do this.

Bob Billings
Reno, Nevada
toadhall@sprynet.com.geentroep