Wednesday
Sep222010
The problem with hoarding...
Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 05:54AM 
I have about a dozen of these for sale - factory fresh. Found in a building store room yesterday and sent to us.
Any takers?
I suspect given some diligence I may also be able to also round up:
- Filmstrip projector lamps
- StyleWriter ink cartridges
- Shrink wrapped teacher manuals from out-dated math series
- 3.5 inch computer disks (may 5 1/4 if I try hard)
- 2400 baud modems
The budgeting paradox is that maybe if we didn't hoard, we wouldn't need to hoard.
Reader Comments (9)
I think these treasures can be found in many a library/av/technology backroom. I think our paranoia contributes to our hoarding. The idea that you want to be ready for any request/question/demand gets us to hold onto things too long. In my last spot I held onto ancient projectors that used FXL or some other type of overhead bulb..."a teacher might need one." That day never came...
I did something similar not too long ago. After one presentation where I forgot my Mac LCD dongle, I went out and bought three of them: one for the office, one for my laptop bag, one for my suitcase. I was all set.
A couple of months later, I had to replace my laptop. Wouldn't you know - it had a completely different adapter.
I'm finding all kinds of things in my back rooms that are cracking me up. I just dumped a cardboard box full of cords. I had them all out on the floor, classifying them by type when one of the tech guys came in. I asked them what they were for and he spent a few minutes surveying them, pulled our four (out of like what looked like 4 thousand) and said to junk the rest.
Most of them were in original packaging!
The custodian brought it bac down to me and was like, "You sure you want to get rid of all these?"
I'm sure!
And in another room I just found a box of USB connected DISK DRIVES! No, really. The clerk said some people were using them as recently as LAST YEAR.
Not anymore they aren't!
I have some punch cards that my husband had stuck in a box. And don't ask about the cables...
While cleaning out my school's news studio this summer I found a device that could transfer music from a record to a cassette tape!!!
Just the accessories? I just pulled from 1 elementary school LMC closet: 3 slide projectors with 6 extra carriages; one DuKane filmstrip projector and three shelves of filmstrips/cassettes; one DuKane filmstrip individual viewer (a box with a screen plus a place for the strip and the cassette); two boxes of 5 1/4 floppies; three boxes of used & unused 3 1/2 floppies; 20 blank VHS cassettes; piles of old software in various formats; a zillion digital-to-S-video converters; USB floppy drives; 20 one-plug surge protectors with phone jack ins & outs; the instruction booklets for several reel-to-reel projectors; photocopied manuals for Laserdisc series; a billion laserdiscs; 60 fabric covers for dot matrix printers and old macs; 12 ribbons for dot-matrix printers...
When I questioned keeping two 6-year-old digital cameras labelled "broken" I was told that we are to conserve, and had I found out whether they could be fixed? No. No, I had not, so I called our repair service. They said no one fixes digital cameras, and did I realize how old 6 years was? The previous librarian had asked someone for repair pricing and got a quote for $175. Honestly. Some of this crap wasn't thrown out because the administrators would just send it back. They were sure we could do something with it. (Of course, who is the first to complain when the library is too full of carts of things to fit staff meetings in there?)
When we went to purchase new listening stations, I requested CD + MP3 player dock capability. This is easily available in the consumer market, but apparently no one told school providers. I did mention that cassette might be useful since we can get cassette audiobooks cheaply as public libraries deaccession their collections, but that I really wanted MP3 bad, so we could buy a subscription. What did we get? cassette + CD only. Wait! They play MP3 CDs, at least! I'm beginning to wonder just how old those slide projectors really were. Did the manufacturers convince the school market that slides were really close to powerpoint anyway, so why not buy new ones?
Kershoo! Kershoo!
Hi Nathan,
Paranoia based on chronic under-funding, I expect. Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you.
Doug
HI Elizabeth,
Glad to know I am not the only one who has done this! I buy extra power cords too.
Doug
Kathy,
"Are you a saver or a tosser?" should be a question discussed in all pre-marital counseling.
Doug
Hi Sneezy,
Your reply wins. What a find!
Thanks for the comment,
Doug
Doug- we could use those "mouse balls" as students here tend to take them out when useless teachers leave them unsupervised in the lab.
Actually, in the storage room (the school, not the library- I don't have one) there are boxes of microfilm, if you're looking for that hard to find Newsweek article from 1967. I've thrown some stuff out when I've found the time (you know, email maintenance that I need to get in there at a certain time, then wait about 3 months for them to respond). In fact, I'm told the old hen who was the librarian here for 25 years before my time used to give her budget money back because she could find books really cheap at yard sales and Goodwill. Can't make this stuff up. My last three years I have utilized "Operation Bitch n' Pitch" to say goodbye to these 60's TimeLife gems. But she did spend $2k a year on microfiche, right up to her retirement in...oh, 2006.
Gotta go...off to the dumpster.
Bob,
You really have mice that still take balls? My goodness!
Doug