Back in 2015 I reported on my efforts to find a permanent home for my document collection. I had no success with any of the organisations I mentioned in that post, and subsequently turned my attention to trying to find a contemporary historian who is interested in the development of computing. I came across one Daniel Wilson (no relation) based at Cambridge University who has a particular interest in the history of science and technology; and I duly contacted him. Despite being interested in hearing about the contents of the collection, he felt unable to help, explaining that “this will require significant work and few people have the budget or the time, given current pressures”. He gave me the name of another contemporary historian at Leicester University who I also tried emailing, but, despite sending a follow-up, I got no response. I’ve concluded that individual academics just have too little time to take on the management of a collection that isn’t absolutely central to a specific piece of work that they are doing.

I am now turning my attention, once more, to institutions, and have just sent an email to the Keeper of Manuscripts and Special Collections (MSC) at the University of Nottingham. I came across this organisation in a JISC email which advised that MSC has just joined the DPC. I was able to mention in the email that, not only have I just completed a digital preservation exercise on the PAWDOC collection using templates which are published in the DPC website; but also that the PAWDOC collection contains much material from the Cosmos project in which the University’s Department of Computer Science took part – perhaps those little extra bits of information might spark an extra bit of interest.