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I have an extensive collection of film books and magazines and there is nobody in my circle of acquaintances who would want or appreciate them. The majority of them are about silent film. Now, I have no intention of shuffling off this mortal coil any time soon. However, I have thought about what I should do with them after I am gone. Any thoughts?

My plans are to donate them to a local college with a good film history department. And to do it before my son has to deal with it!

I donated my personal book and film collections -- thousands of each -- to a silent film museum in Niles, California. They do public shows at least once a week and I'm very happy when I show up there and see how the stuff is used. There is a lot to be said for making these decisions when one is still competent to choose wisely.

David Shepard

I plan on donating mine to the Kansas Silent Film Festival - assuming they are interested. I haven't run this by them yet but I want to make sure my collection goes somewhere where it is wanted and can be used. I don't have a huge collection at this time, but it is growing rather quickly. Hopefully this won't be an issue for quite a while, but at least I have a plan I feel good about.

This is interesting, as I was at a record fair last week and bought around a hundred jazz CDs at a very cheap price from a dealer I know well. He said they came from a collection of 8000 CDs and 5000 LPs he is slowly working through. When I got home and started looking at them more closely, I realised the previous owner had gone through his jazz magazines and cut out all relevant pieces on the album and inserted it into the booklet. Some were signed too. I realised then that this was a collection of someone who had died, and had been his life's work, so to speak. His family, not caring or knowing what to do with them, had just sold them on for probably a few thousand pounds to get rid of them (at most, I only paid £1 each). So I do think these things need to be thought about in advance, although I hopefully have a few decades left yet!

Very interesting indeed, I've thought about this in the past. There used to be a huge record sale to benefit the Lou Gerhig/ALS charity just north of Chicago and I found scads of old Broadway show 78 albums (in pristine condition) with the original booklets as well as Playbills and reviews clipped from the newspapers of the Chicago productions. Someone took great care of them before they passed. Another time in a resale shop I came across a beautiful (huge) custom wood shelving unit filled with art auction catalogs that had obviously been someone's pride & joy. Only to end up in a third rate thrift shop with the catalogs falling into a huge heap on the dirty floor. Very sad. I'm still not sure of what to do with my stuff-books, records, cd, laser discs (and extra, unopened player new in box-just in case!), etc.

If anyone has rare magazines which are not likely to be found by the Media History Digital Library, you should scan and upload them to the Internet Archive prior to simply donating them somewhere.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/b ... ?page=show" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

Above link will take you to "The Hollywood Reporter Unveils the Top 25 Film Schools of 2013," from the Hollywood Reporter. The highly detailed article will show you a list of universities with the leading course studies. Any of these would welcome the addition of a donated cinema book collection. -David Menefee, author Sweet Memories, Wally: The True Wallace Reid Story, The Rise and Fall of Lou-Tellegen, and Richard Barthelmess: A Life in Pictures.

I had a similar experience to Lamar and silentmovies742. I paid $20 for a large collection of pristine theatre programmes and memorabilia from the 1950s to the 1970s that I spotted at a neighbourhood street market. The market was about to close, and I'm fairly certain the garbage bin was the next stop if they didn't sell.

Because it's not an era I collect, I thought I would collate it and pass it on to a worthy institution. When I got it home I realised it was the life's collection of a fairly well known theatre actor turned collector/historian, and included such things as his personal scrapbook from one of his major productions. His newspaper obituary even mentioned his collection.

I approached a number of institutions offering to donate it. How much interest did I get? Next to zero. One wanted to take a few bits and pieces, but I felt it was important that the collection be kept intact. This is a record of a person's entire life of theatre-going. Its completeness tells a story in itself. The whole lot is now in storage, being useful to precisely nobody.

The message here is twofold: first, approach the institution ahead of time and make sure they are going to want to take your donation. Second, if you do have any strong feelings about what should or should not happen to the collection, make sure they are aware of them.

The most important thing is to leave a will or written instructions, because without that, your heirs can do anything with the material. An important person involved with Hollywood Heritage told several in the organization he wanted everything he had (which was mostly books and papers, no money), to go to the organization. When he unexpectedly passed away at the age of 54, he left no will. When a cousin was found as his next direct heir, she decided to sell the material. Always leave a will or detailed, written legal instructions, because otherwise it won't matter what you want to happen with the material.

missdupont wrote:The most important thing is to leave a will or written instructions, because without that, your heirs can do anything with the material.

JFK wrote:I, too, think a will, or better still, a tax-avoiding trust, should be set up by one and all.

This is critical. I don't mean to go Suzy Orman on everybody, but a Revocable Living Trust is a responsible thing to do and a perfect way to document how you want your estate settled - and things like book collections or similar can be included.