Remembering the future
<p>I own a rather large library of paperback SF which I have been collecting since the late 1960s; it includes a lot of stuff that is now quite rare and half forgotten. I <a href="http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=952">owe a great deal to SF</a> and consider these books cultural treasures, The last few years I&#8217;ve been wondering if there&#8217;s any way to ensure that this treasure won&#8217;t be lost as conventional printed books get left behind and the remaining copies of the more obscure stuff crumble.</p>
<p>Maybe there is the beginning of an answer.  <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/singularityco/singularity-and-co/">Singularity &#038; Co. &#8211; Save the SciFi!</a> is a Kickstarter project aimed specifically at rescuing out-of-print genre SF from oblivion.  It is not yet clear whether their methods will scale; scanning is easy but untangling the IP around these old books can be difficult. But the response to the project has been encouraging; they&#8217;re already 240% over their initial funding goal.</p>
<p>I have contributed $25, and offered them the use of my library.  If it looks like they have developed a sustainable set of methods I will contribute a lot more.  I think this is a worthy project and deserving of support from everyone who loves science fiction.</p>
