As I mentioned on the Space Show interview a while back, one of the events that started me working on Aerospace Projects Review was the reported destruction of the Bell Aerospace technical library. It turns out that aerospace libraries aren’t the only technical libraries to suffer that sort of fate. Behold:
This apparently is – or, more correctly,”was” – a good chunk of the Fisheries and Oceans Canada library in Mont-Joli, Quebec. Now it’s dumpster-filler. THIS STORY describes what’s going on at a number of Canadian government Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries where vast reams of irreplaceable data is being simply chucked as a cost-savings measure. Replace “fish” with “rockets” and “oceanography” with “aerospace,” and the story is virtually identical to what has happened time and again in the US aerospace industry.It also describes why “just digitize it” is an insufficient response.
The vast bulk of the technical information generated by and kept at United Tech near San Jose, CA (former manufacturers of the Titan SRMs) was simply chucked, either into recyclers or into vast storage facilities where the information was un-indexed and irretrievable. The main technical library, fortunately, was passed on to CPIA… or at least those bits of the library that hadn’t been appropriated by managers who came in in the last days and simply walked off with stuff (something that did *not* please the chief librarian, but she couldn’t stop it).
Man, there was a *lot* of stuff there that I wish I could’ve walked off with. I’d give someone else’s left nut for their complete CPIA Motor Manuals…