Prosfic Reading Challenge - Read a ProsFic This Week (and tell us about it)!

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Is anyone reading Pros fic at the moment? It's quiet here - and there, and there, too! It's nearly the end of August, and it's the late August bank holiday here in lads' land, so let's have a reading challenge this week! This is how to join in:

1 - Read a Pros fic!
2 - Post here to let us know what it was and whether you enjoyed it!
3 - Repeat, repeat, repeat until the end of the week! *g*

There - easy one, right? I know it's been a wee while since I read a Pros fic last - if it's the same for you, then let's see if we can get back into the habit for a wee while, because it's one of those good habits, isn't it... *g*

UK Paper Circuit Library - decision made!

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It's taken a wee while for the cogs to complete their turning (okay, over a year!), but you might remember that I unexpectedly became the current custodian of the UK Paper Circuit Library when the Three Guardians who inherited it from Sara needed to pass it on. I've been trying to decide since then the best thing to do with the 86 lever arch ring binders full of Pros stories, and it's been quite hard. My instincts are to save everything! because that's what historians do. Sort of. And once history is lost, then it's lost.

Except...

1) I've been intermittently working my way through some of the folders, and the vast majority of stories in them are either online somewhere or/and they're on ProsLib, saved for us all by the fab hagsrus and colleagues.

2) Many of the stories are faded and hard to read (and scan) copies-of-copies-of-copies.

3) Many of the stories feel and/or smell slightly yuck, because their original life was in a smoker's house, back when that was considered okay, and I guess they've never been replaced. When I was borrowing stories from the library Way Back When (a dozen years ago or so) I remember buying disposable gloves for when I received an envelope of them, because the smokiness was so thick that my fingers smelled of cigarettes after handling the stories - it's faded alot now of course, but it's still there on alot of them. So they really all need replacing as documents anyway.

So... here's my plan:

1. I'm going to recycle any stories that are either online in an archive or on the ProsLib CD. That's 25/28 of the stories in File 1, for instance. If anyone would like me to send them any stories instead of recycling them (you might not have a printer, but like hard copies for instance) then I'm happy to do that for the cost of postage.

2. Obviously I will keep any stories that aren't available elsewhere (or have extra bits to them, like illustrations), and I will scan them to create electronic documents that can be printed out and shared in some way (I worked out that my printer does OCR after all!) I'm not going to put stories online without the author's permission, but I'll work out a way for people to find and access them - maybe printing them up into zines of some kind, or just sending them out to interested people, or something. If hagsrus has author permissions to archive their stories, then I'll pass them on to her for including in ProsLib.

Now, because I don't consider them my sole possessions, because Pros stories were written for Pros readers to read, and so I think we should all have a say, here's a poll for clicking. Bear in mind that I'm moving house at the end of next month, and I'd rather move less stuff than more, so please fill it in soon if you have any interest in all this. Lack of responses will be taken as agreement by people who just don't care that much!

[Poll #2104520]

I am going to be wincing with every story I slide into the recycling box, but I finally decided that it was the sensible option.

On the other hand, I'm looking forward to sharing all the other stories with you! *g*

So - what do you reckon?!