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Furthering the preservation of Juiced.GS

The Information Cube

Two years ago, Juiced.GS was archived by museums, libraries, and institutions around the world. One year ago, we completed those collections when we brought volumes 1–6 back into print.

Today, we continue to expand our preservation efforts by adding two new organizations to the list of archives now charged with the preservation of our Apple II magazine.

Seattle’s Living Computer Museum, founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, opened its doors on October 25, 2012. Juiced.GS staff writer Peter Neubauer was one of its first visitors, providing an extensive write-up of his experience in our December issue. The connection between the LCM and Juiced.GS was further recently cemented at the launch party of The New England Wide Computer Museum, or NEW Computer Museum, formerly known as the Digital Den. There, Prof. Mary Hopper made the introduction of Juiced.GS editor Ken Gagne to the LCM’s senior vintage systems engineer, Ian King. As a rapidly growing organization, the LCM was happy to accept a donation of 71 back issues of Juiced.GS, with more to come as they are published.

The Information Cube

Museums aren’t the only organizations interested in Juiced.GS. Mention “archiving” in the retrocomputing world, and one of the first names you’ll hear is Jason Scott: digital historian, Archive.org employee, guest lecturer, and KansasFest keynote speaker. His Information Cube is a repository of physical artifacts related to the history of computers and their users. Juiced.GS‘s past and future catalog will now be included in this archive as well.
Our thanks to the many historians who are ensuring Juiced.GS‘s place in the story of the personal computer will be known for generations to come!

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Completing the Juiced.GS collection

About this time a year ago, collections of Juiced.GS back issues were donated to museums and institutions around the world for archiving and distribution. Although at the time Juiced.GS had published 63 issues, we were able to donate only 39 of them, as the first six years of Juiced.GS had gone out of print.

In the time since then, the third and current publisher of Juiced.GS received from the magazine’s founder the original masters used to produce the initial print run of those six volumes. We handed them over to the Apple II community member with the best reputation for producing high-quality digital reproductions of print material: Juiced.GS staff writer Mike Maginnis of Apple II Scans. Using those masters, Maginnis created PDFs suitable for physical reproduction, bringing Juiced.GS‘s first 24 issues back into print.

Those hardcopy issues have now been shipped to the organizations that had previously received the magazine’s more recent volumes, completing their collections. All 66 issues of Juiced.GS to date are now available from these institutions and will be for as long as their hosts continue to exist.

Although Juiced.GS still sees a long and healthy future for our role in the Apple II print industry, we are heartened to know that every issue we will publish and have published will leave an indelible mark in the history of the Apple II, courtesy the work of these generous curators and preservationists.

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Distribution and preservation: The benefits of an ISSN

Modern society assigns everything a number. People are their Social Security Numbers; your money is a bank account number; the last book you read has an International Standard Book Number. It makes everything neat and tidy, easy to organize and track.

As of this past summer, Juiced.GS also has a number: 2162-7746. That is the International Standard Serial Number, or ISSN, that has been assigned to the publication by the Library of Congress. We requested an ISSN because of the many valuable benefits it brings to legitimate periodicals such as Juiced.GS. Over 80 countries coordinate and recognize ISSN assignments and can use ours for a variety of purposes:

  • A unique ISSN distinguishes Juiced.GS title from any other Apple II publication with which it might be confused.
  • Other editions of Juiced.GS, such as the Concentrate line, need their own ISSNs, allowing us to differentiate various formats of the same publication.
  • ISSNs help libraries and others who handle large numbers of serials to check in a title so it can get to users more quickly.
  • Scholars, researchers, archivists, and librarians can accurately cite serials by ISSN.
  • In the future, users may search and link to digital records, articles, and other files.

An ISSN also helps establish Juiced.GS‘s place in history. Although the movement to preserve a record of Apple II publications in a digital format is a valuable and necessary one, there is no substitute for the look and feel of print. Juiced.GS‘s ISSN is valid only for its print edition, which is the magazine’s original format and the way it was intended to be read. To that end, Juiced.GS has been actively reaching out to a variety of relevant non-profit organizations charged with ensuring the archive of and access to computer history. Several such institutions have accepted donations of the complete collection of Juiced.GS, currently starting with volume 7, and have added the magazine to their collection. Due to the cost of producing these back issues, we are not currently seeking further recipients. For now, you can now find Juiced.GS throughout the country and the world at these establishments:

Several of the above institutes have further indexed Juiced.GS with the OCLC WorldCat, a global library catalog. Many of the 72,000 libraries that participate in WorldCat offer interlibrary loan — so if you need to access Juiced.GS, be it individual volumes, issues, or even articles, chances are you can request it be sent from one of the above libraries to your local branch.

The best way to ensure the longevity of data is to put it in as many hands as possible — and no matter the issues involved with digital distribution, from file compatibility to DRM, print will always remain viable and accessible. The above archives will help preserve Juiced.GS as a part of computer history for generations to come.