Aircraft Museum Libraries

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5 years 6 months

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Member for

5 years 6 months

Posts: 105

What makes a library a good resource for the aviation museum it is attached too. It depends if its resourced by the government of that country, where wages are allowed and books and manuals are bought with taxpayer money, and even the best facilities are not a problem, and dare I say it the tea/coffee and biscuits are top class.


You then have the other private libraries staffed by un paid volunteers, donated books and manuals, second hand facilities and tea/coffee, plus biscuits that are not in the providore class.


As a private museum your donations can be a mixed bag as you luckily gain a donation form that states the museum if not needing the resource can do what it likes with it.


This donation can go into three categories that are covered by thus. 1.Ow my god look at this. 2. Do we have one and do we need it. 3. The last one comes under, the Beano, Dandy ( British Comics) and the bare arse monthly category, that then gets turfed into the rubbish bin or sold second hand at the shop.


The subjects are covered by the alphabet and each letter has another range of the alphabet, thus each book and manual has two letters of the alphabet and a number that is not duplicated in the computer, but sometimes by mistake it is duplicated and with smoke coming out of your nose you look for the twit that did it. When you find out it is your mistake, your vast knowledge of the library can eradicate the problem before others see it.


With the knowledge that books and magazines go back to 1909, you also gain the knowledge that the Cessna 172 pilot's notes will one day be an historical aircraft long after you have left this planet and must save the books covering it, so that the future population of the world will gain the knowledge you saved.


The clients that come through your door think that the brand of McDonalds has extended to your library and you will get the information they need in 2 minutes, this has problems built in due to the software not allowing your instant access to the obscure book or manual on the screen, if the information is forthcoming then the next obstacle can be the fact that the book has been put back in the wrong place. They can also be upset due to the fact that their relative or aircraft does not appear on the donated books. This can be because the author was the rear gunner and the relative was the navigator. It remains up to the author to include the other flight crew or not, this can be because of the authors war experiences. The missing aircraft maybe one that did not gain flight and ended in matchwood.


Over the years authors and publishers have written or published the books that sell due to the subjects that are most sell able and this becomes a problem as the Spitfire, Lancaster, P-51, Boeing B-17 saturate your shelves with usually the same information and pictures. The aircraft built by certain constructors and manufacturers are not mentioned due to them being on the nose for what they did or did not do. It is only recently that books from the Eastern European countries are now covering the missing aviation histories over the 20th century. South America is one of these areas that books provide access to the aircraft used and plus the often political wars and quick endings they have. First World War books and magazines are many and now varied about little thought about aircraft and actions especially in the Balkan and Italian area , with Cross & Cockade being a leading magazine on the subject.


Some books that are donated are found to be already on the shelves and you check to see which one is in better condition. You do find that the worst one has a signature written inside the book cover and it can be a pioneer or military pilot with a history, so you keep both good and bad books for that reason. One particular title had the same author but three different publishers, with the books having different coloured covers and sizes, so you keep all three.


The saddest paper work coming into the library is the manuscripts that are half finished, plus the flight crew log books that are signed off by the C.O. and end in a date during the wars.


You rely on your knowledge being without having any problems, until you call the aircraft by the wrong manufacturer, then you wake up to the fact that your are not infallible.


So if you see a librarian volunteer with their head in their hands its because that they have realised that the last 300 inputs into the computer are wrong and they need to be changed, so take pity on them.


I hope that other aviation libraries and librarians give their experiences to this thread.

Profile picture for user Bazinga

Member for

5 years 2 months

Posts: 1

If only this would be digitized and made available..

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20 years 2 months

Posts: 778

Good looking library, which museum is this, and is it available to the public?

Member for

5 years 6 months

Posts: 105

The library in question is part of the Aircraft Heritage Museum, Perth, Western Australia.
We are going through the problems that appear when you buy a second hand book copier. The copyright issue is one of these. From our earliest book of 1909 up to at least about the 1940s you can digitise them, but what subjects would anyone want. Manuals of aircraft and engines are a must, then biographies and autobiographies are next.
The need to digitise the old books is because of multiple handling by various people and sometimes heavy handling as well. Once they are digitised they no longer need to be touched. They then can be PDF and be able to go on memory sticks and be sold to cover the initial cost of the machine and memory stick. Costs depend on who digitises the material, volunteers or paid people. Unfortunately nothing is free and private museums need to cover costs. The library is open to volunteers and reference people, but not the general public. You only have to see what the general public do to books at non aircraft libraries, what with coffee/tea stains, bread and other food products. We could not police the lending of books and expect no damage.
The down loading to memory sticks would allow people to take them home or go overseas without the original being abused. Still working out which is best and any other problems as we have not started yet. What are your thoughts.

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24 years 2 months

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Good idea for a thread. Where are the great aviation libraries of the world?

the RAF Museum is one... any other candidates?

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7 years 2 months

Posts: 216

Dade, this is what needs to happen. I am sure if all the museums in Australia got together that all the books, magazine etc could be digitized in a nice timely manner.

https://youtu.be/03ccxwNssmo

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15 years 4 months

Posts: 121

Interesting subject that will most likely fade into the ether. So sad. A measure of any air museum is the library and research that can be accomplished at that facility. I totally understand the problems and pitfalls of running the museum as well as the library. Sadly much of the truly needed information never gets to the library and one ends up with a collection of picture books, rehash of the same pictures, or coffee table books. Makes me want to tear my hair out. (what's left of it that is). Serious research is very very difficult. Try finding a 1930 or 1935 copy of the Brown's Brothers catalog. Great information if you can find the book. Try finding the electrical schematic for a 1930's-40's Air Ministry Voltmeter. All near unobtainium. The suggestion of using the RAF / printing office is a deadens. I do not even receive replies that my request from Hendon (etc) even graced a desk. The Smithsonian is no better. At this point in time NACA is the only web site that gives information. (strangely. ...do not search under NACA but try linking to them thru the British side ((Hendon etc)) the NACA site (U.S.A.) has been redone to make it near useless.) So what is the solution? Making every aviation enthusiast aware that she/he (being P.C.) should get all of one's aero info to an aviation museum. If we could get a 1 in 20 return that would be wonderful.
I have noticed that a fair amount of this information is for sale on the web. problem is that one can easily go thru 20 books until one sentence or picture of value shows up. That is just too expensive for any of us. Another thought would be for a forum such as this would set aside an information sharing area for obscure manuals, drawings, and pictures.
So there stops my sermon, time to figure out how to get to sleep without nightmares of orangoutangs.
Cheers,

Member for

5 years 6 months

Posts: 105

It would be a lovely thought if all museum libraries could digitise their books so that others could use them as reference material. But the reality of the situation is that it costs money to digitise books/manuals and they cannot get a good return on what they have. Our machine cost $25,000 Australian dollars second hand to buy, three volunteers were trained in how to use it, but within six months all three had given up volunteering at the museum. Over the next two to three years we had a high turn over of people from another area of people labour. That produced digitised copies of obscure books, missing pages, half finished books and no way of recovering the copied books as they did not assign Dewey letters or numbers or titles as these were on the spine of the book, common sense did not prevail. So it was a waste of time. We are going to attempt doing them from scratch by the oldest years and give each one the Dewey letters and numbers and titles, that way we can then make up a list of books/manuals we have and charge the reference costs accordingly. Unfortunately nothing is free or cheap and our machine needs a person to turn the pages over . Although I liked the copier on YouTube it looked dangerous when flicking pages over and the costs involved could put it out of reach of a private museum that only has income from people coming through the door. Although books are donated to us and you would think there should be no overheads, you have four air conditioners going twenty four hours a day, seven days a week to gain the correct atmosphere, as well as other overheads. So unfortunately the free open reference library and sharing costs with other museum libraries would not happen as the next museum to us is about 2,000 kilometres, about 1,000 miles from us. So you see again I can use my favourite saying, It's Catch 22 when it comes to gaining an easy answer.

I came up to another problem in another thread where a person asked for a particular Air Ministry, Publication and Number but no year, which we had. I put a photo of it on the thread but received the answer although it was the correct publication, it was close to about seventeen years after the one he needed and no longer resembled the one he needed. Another problem that came up when doing my audit on books, although Airbus is an Airbus is an Airbus, the Aero Commander went on to be built by other manufacturers, even Mc Donnell /Douglas products became Boeing products, plus De Havilland Canada products will be and are now being built by another Constructor, and although they look the same on the outside, different equipment fills the insides. But do not despair if you need one page or two of information, these can be photographed and attached to a thread or email, but if you want more, SHOW ME THE MONEY.

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5 years 6 months

Posts: 105

In another forum a person has added to this same written thread with an interesting site, its worth looking at.

AirCorps Aviation has a branch; AirCorps Library


https://aircorpslibrary.com/