When it’s time to find a new home for auto books and periodical collections, the San Diego Automotive Museum has a welcoming committee for them. Families must ponder an age-old decision. What to do with grandfather’s prized collection: to a library or the dumpster? Not always an easy choice. The museum’s shelves might be bulging, but 11 volunteer librarians will make room. Duplications may be sold to others. Guy Preuss, who’s been the bookmaster there since 1992, said most auto museums, such as Petersens and Blackhawk, would rather digitize history and not bother with books. “The paper collections will be around a lot longer than the digital process,” Preuss predicted. He refers to his expanding staff of librarians as car nuts. “They haven’t been associated with the car business … they’ve just been car tinkerers,” he said. The auto museum refers to itself as a resource center but Preuss said, “It’s an old-style research library with a card index. “We have well over 3,000 expensive and rare hard-cover books dealing with all facets of automobile history. There are over 2,500 hard-back manuals going back to the ’20s and 13,000 club magazines and newsletters.” And there are way too many other periodicals to count. “The oldest is the San Diego Motor News, dating back to 1910 and Motor Magazines as far back as 1913,” Preuss said. “The latter was the first automobile magazine, begun in 1895. The biggest collection is 30 volumes of Automotive Quarterly. We also have 14 volumes of Dykes repair manuals from 1910 to 1920. Never paid attention to what some of our collections are worth. “If anyone needs some pages copied, we’ll Xerox them at no charge. It’s just a gift from the museum,” he said. The only cost would be admission to the museum. The only problem is, he can’t get anyone to work weekends. “When people retire and reach the volunteer age, they do other things on the weekends,” Press said. “So, the library is closed Saturday and Sunday.” A retired master chief in the Navy, Preuss started there in 1992, learning from a staff librarian. When she left, he handled it by himself until Larry Oakey came along. Over the years others became interested. “Once or twice a year we’ll conduct a ‘garage sale’ at the Qualcomm Swap Meet or the San Diego Car Club’s Car Show in the Park.” Preus said. “We also sell duplicates or triplicates on a walk-in basis. “We accept anything related to automobiles that’s paper. We’ll take it under the proviso that if it is a duplicate or triplicate we reserve the option to sell them or maybe swap them to another museum.” Preus said they have drawers full of pictures, but nobody has figured out how to identify them. “We take them because the alternative is the dumpster.” he said. “As time goes by maybe someone can figure out what we’ve got.” Distant plans call for a new building with a 2,500-square-foot library space. “I’m not holding my breath for that to happen,” Preus shrugged. “If we did [get the space], we’d quickly fill it up.”