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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Stanford keeps ending up with that sort of thing. That's what the Stanford Auxiliary Library holds. They now have SAL1 and SAL2 on campus, and SAL3 is a warehouse in Livermore. It's not just data. Stanford ended up with the Museum of Magnetic Recording from AMPEX in 2001. Somewhere in there is the first video tape recorder.

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They also host the world's largest curated videogame collection. Henry is a treasure.

Is it possible for non students or Stanford affiliates to get access to this stuff?

You can visit some of the libraries (listed below from [0]) and request access to most of the archival collections, but you won't be able to borrow anything from either. Note that [0] also applies to the free visits (7 days per year) as well, not just the fee-based library card holders.

- Art & Architecture

- Branner Earth Sciences

- East Asia

- Green

- Music

- Science (Li & Ma)

- Terman Engineering

Note that the video games in the collection are considered archival materials, it requires requesting material online ahead of time and you may only use it in a reading room[1] (unless I think you're assigned as a proxy lender by a faculty member, but you have to be a student/affiliate to be one) and the process is open to the public[2]. IIRC from my freshman year when I did a paper on video games, they had special reading rooms with equipment to use the video games, but that was over 10 years ago now. You may need to also request/reserve the necessary equipment as well.

0: https://library.stanford.edu/using/access-and-privileges/pri...

1: https://guides.library.stanford.edu/c.php?g=1024656&p=786581...

2: https://library.stanford.edu/spc/using-our-collections

The Cantor Museum is also free and open to the public and has an impressive collection.

Interestingly, they have one each of the gold and silver spikes from the Transcontinental railroad. (They're not at Promontory, UT.) The Museum of the City of New York has the other silver spike. The other golden spike was presumed lost until 2005 but is now on display in the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.

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