Digitise, Preserve and Share Dreamcast Magazines
Donation protected
I am seeking to raise £450 to cover the costs of having 42 Dreamcast magazines, comprising roughly 5,100 pages of content, professionally scanned. The scans will be uploaded to public repositories such as SegaRetro, RetroMags and The Internet Archive for all to enjoy. This is a non-profit voluntary endeavour in the interests of serving the burgeoning Dreamcast community, video-game historians, and anyone else with a penchant for print publications of yesteryear. Any and all donations are welcome. Please read on for further details.
The Magazines and the Rationale
The magazines to be scanned and digitally preserved are 'Dreamzone' and 'Dreamcast Arena'.
'Dreamzone' is a French-language magazine which ran for 29 issues between 1998 and 2002. There are currently only a handful of issues available online. As seen in the photo above, I have a full run which I am seeking to digitise with the help of this fundraiser.
'Dreamcast Arena' is an Italian-language magazine which ran for 16 issues between 1999 and 2001. There is currently only a single issue available online. I am aiming to digitise issues 3-16.
The magazines contain a huge amount of information, including:
- Reporting on all the twists and turns of the Dreamcast's lifespan, from the heady beginnings through to the desperate endings, all from the perspective of the French and Italian markets
- Extensive reviews of hundreds of titles
- Previews of dozens of unreleased games, from those that were nearly complete (such as Half Life and Propellor Arena), to those that were most likely never going to make it out of the arcade (such as Wild Riders) or off the drawing board (Drones, Galleon etc.)
- Interviews with the likes of Philippe Renaudin (Director of Marketing, Sega France) and Peter Molyneux (Designer of Black & White)
- Editorials and readers' letters providing snapshots in time from the Dreamcast era
- Dozens of adverts showcasing game artwork and marketing approaches of the period
Scanning, Preservation and the Costs
I have acquired these magazines at my own cost with the sole intention of having them digitised and made publicly available. The £450 that I am seeking to raise here is solely to cover the costs of employing the services of a professional scanning business (Storetec) to undertake the scanning work, from whom I have obtained a quote. The money raised will cover all aspects of the process from the couriering of the magazines, to the removal of spines, preparation and scanning of material, and finally, the delivery of digital files. This will be a destructive process, which means there is zilch in it for me, aside from the satisfaction of knowing these magazines will be preserved.
There are folks out there who kindly undertake scanning work of this nature on a voluntary basis, however, they are few and far between, and typically already occupied with ongoing projects. Scanning large batches such as this one is a highly labour intensive venture, and given the trim size of the magazines, cannot feasibly be done with a regular A4 home scanner. Specialist equipment, specialist knowledge, and lots of time would be needed. I have reached out for volunteer scanners within a couple of magazine scanning communities but have not had any takers yet.
The primary benefit of crowdfunding the scanning of these magazines is that a large volume of material will be made available relatively quickly. The output may not be of the exceptional standard that can be attained by some hobbyist scanners (through image editing and restoration for example), but the material should be of a decent and readable quality:
- Full-colour scans in 300dpi
- Spines removed to enable full-page capture
- PDFs of each magazine issue with OCR applied
- TIFF images to allow for post-scan editing if desired
About Me
I suppose what you want to hear is why you can trust me not to pocket any cash raised from this fundraiser? Well, I have been kicking around the Dreamcast community for quite some time... My username on the Dreamcast-Talk forums (and before that, OnlineConsoles.com!) is 'Lozz'. You may also have played online with me under that moniker, or read some of my articles over at the Dreamcast Junkyard.
In essence then, I am motivated not to clear off with your donations because: a) I don't wish to be ostracized from the Dreamcast scene, b) I want to see these magazines preserved before they perish with the winds of time, and c) in this economy, £450 wouldn't get me very far!
Please do feel free to get in touch with comments, feedback or questions, and thank you for reading this rambling appeal.
Organizer
Laurence Goodchild
Organizer