When it\u2019s 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\u2019s prized collection: to a library or the dumpster? Not always an easy choice. The museum\u2019s shelves might be bulging, but 11 volunteer librarians will make room. Duplications may be sold to others. Guy Preuss, who\u2019s 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\u2019t been associated with the car business … they\u2019ve just been car tinkerers,” he said. The auto museum refers to itself as a resource center but Preuss said, “It\u2019s 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 \u201920s 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\u2019ll Xerox them at no charge. It\u2019s just a gift from the museum,” he said. The only cost would be admission to the museum. The only problem is, he can\u2019t 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\u2019ll conduct a \u2018garage sale\u2019 at the Qualcomm Swap Meet or the San Diego Car Club\u2019s 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\u2019s paper. We\u2019ll 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\u2019ve got.” Distant plans call for a new building with a 2,500-square-foot library space. “I\u2019m not holding my breath for that to happen,” Preus shrugged. “If we did [get the space], we\u2019d quickly fill it up.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When it\u2019s 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\u2019s prized collection: to a library or the dumpster? Not always an easy choice. The museum\u2019s shelves might be bulging, […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11556","_seopress_titles_title":"SD Automotive Museum is home to volumes of auto literature","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11556,11547,11593],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-downtown-news","category-features","category-no-images"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}