Another "Archive" post

[Repack Rider]

We failed to meet an optimistic goal with a Kickstarter campaign a few months ago to pay for a major operation to distribute online the contents of the most comprehensive archive on mountain biking. So we're trying again, with a more limited goal.

For Kickstarter, if you don't reach the goal in the allotted time, all pledges are returned and the campaign is over.

We're trying again with GoFundMe, which allows any level of contribution and has no ending point. Contributors will get online access once we can start the lengthy process of scanning all of this.

After three decades of storing, moving and protecting this collection, I am not looking to recover the tens of thousands of dollars it has already cost me. I just want to get out from under the $300 a month it is currently costing me just to own it, and maybe buy some computer equipment to proceed with making it available to the public.

I got some relief when the Marin Museum of Bicycling rented me the space to store it in, which gets it out of a storage locker and allows me to once again use the material in it, but it is still an ongoing expense.

The big expense in the future will be the bandwidth.

Here are a few links of the sort the archive is full of. You could have access to this.

First issue of Fat Tire Flyer, 1980

Kelly-Fisher MountainBikes catalog, 1983

Co-Evolution Quarterly, 1978 (First printed mention of the new sport.)

1983 NORBA race rules

March-April 1983 Fat Tire Flyer

This is what the collection looks like. I have every issue of every magazine.

 

[al-onestare]

This should be plastered over every mountain biking forum and social media outlet (groups, etc.).

Have you contacted the big outlets: Pinkbike, GMBN, etc. with the new campaign to get some additional traction?

(Signed up )

 

[Repack Rider]

Re:

I have spread it around a few MTB sites.

In a couple of days, contributions have covered several months' rent on the space, which relieves me of the immediate burden.

Next, computer equipment.

 

[Thias]

If you try to make available the german "bike" mags: I can tell you their lawyers will be all over you.
I can tell be cause they jump on you if you even just post a scan of one single page on the german forums. And tell you to take it down immediately, or else...

Just sayin'...

 

[Repack Rider]

If you try to make available the german "bike" mags: I can tell you their lawyers will be all over you.
I can tell be cause they jump on you if you even just post a scan of one single page on the german forums. And tell you to take it down immediately, or else... .

I'll deal with these issues when they arise. I was on the masthead of "Bike" for years, and I know the editors.