MinDocDigPro

MinDocDigPro is The Minnstf Document Digitization Project. This project has two major goals:

1. Preserve MNstf documents via digitization.
2. Make MNstf documents widely available on the web.

There are two major challenges:

1. Actually doing all the scanning
2. Securing permission from copyright holders who contributed to the documents

And one minor challenge: Putting the documents up on the web in a reasonably organized and pleasing way.

Converting paper to computer files

Scanning

Scans should be high enough resolution that the smallest text is easily readable and artwork doesn't lose detail. As a rough guideline, try 300dpi. Or use whatever the highest resolution your scanner supports is as long as that does not make things excessively slow or the storage requirements cumbersome. (For some art 300dpi may not be sufficient to capture the finest details. Use your judgement.)

Scanning in color may be a good idea, even with black and white content. This is because a lot of old reproduction technology has very poor contrast in blue, but much better in red and green. So you can get a better result by working with the red channel than with a greyscale scan where the three have been averaged. On the other hand, your scanner might be much faster if you set it to greyscale, so it might not be worth it for documents that have plenty of contrast to begin with.

Your scanner might have several modes like "scan as document" or "scan as image". Fiddle with these; sometimes you get a dramatic improvement in quality.

Quite possibly the most important thing: Make sure that your scanner is not saving images as JPEGs, since the lossy compression is very inappropriate for text and line drawings (the majority of our content). Any other image format should be fine. If your scanner doesn't give you a choice, use the highest quality JPEG setting.

Processing

Here is a complete set of recommendations for how to take raw scans and make them into a set of documents for the web. You could easily consider doing all of this to be too much work for the payoff. Pick the subset that makes you happy. Bonus if the result of your work can easily be used to do the remainder of what is suggested here.

There are, more or less, five possibly-useful quality/detail levels that you can end up with:

Raw scans

Advantage: Least potential for information loss.

Disadvantage: Very large file sizes.

Lower-res reductions of raw scans

Advantage: Still a totally faithful copy, easy to make.

Disadvantages: Not as detailed as the raw scan.

Cleaned-up high-quality scans

Advantage: Looks better than a raw scan.

Disadvantages: Lots of work. Still fairly large files. Detail may be inadvertently lost.

Scans reduced to the smallest readable size

Advantage: Small file size while still showing all layout.

Disadvantages: Lots of work. Harder to read. Artwork is washed out.

Plain text

Advantages: Very small file size. Can be searched, indexed by search engines, read by blind people, etc.

Disadvantage: Lots of work. Nearly all formatting is lost.

Raw scans

By "raw", I mean that the scans have not been rotated (other than by 90 degree increments), had any colors altered, etc. However, they can (and should) be cropped to remove extra borders due to your scanner being bigger that the document. It is also nice to replace any black areas outside the scanned page that remain with flat black to reduce the file size.

Lower res

When practical, it is useful to scan at a rather high resolution, but offer trivially downscaled versions for web viewing. This is easy to do and not error prone.

Cleaned-up high-quality scans

I no longer do this because it is a lot of work, and I'd rather spend time getting more things scanned, or extracting the plain text from scanned documents. Nevertheless, here is what I did when I did it:

To produce a cleaned-up version of a scan, I first straighten it out. Usually my scans are off-square by ~0.5 degrees. This sounds like a very small amount, but it is easily visible. Then, assuming the document is not in color, I take the best color channel (generally red or green) and throw away the others. Purple ink on a yellow background doesn't count as "in color" since the possible spectrum of colors is still one dimensional. I now have a greyscale image. Defining the background color as "white" and the foreground color as "black", I use GIMPs "color curves" tool to make all very light pixels white and all very dark pixels black. The goal of this is to avoid storing the grain of the paper, flecks of dust, and bleed-through from the other side of the page. If the document is two-tone (i.e. no greyscale artwork), I push this fairly hard, but I leave some gradient between black and white so that the edges of characters are not too sharp. If the document has greyscale art or photos, I just do enough to remove the noise. (Sometimes I even get obsessive and do different parts of the same page different ways.) Usually at this point, at least for text, you can reduce the number of grey levels (from 255 to 16, say) without visibly altering the image. I don't often bother, though. If the document wasn't black ink on white paper, I convert back to the original colors at the end (using GIMP's "colorize" feature). In the end, this version should have a much smaller file size than the raw scans, while also looking a lot better.

Scans reduced to the smallest readable size

I no longer consider this to be a very worthwhile format. Internet connections are now generally fast enough to download decent scans in a reasonable amount of time, so I doubt there are many who desire a crappy image and would not be happier with clean plain text. In any case, when I have made these, this is what I have done:

I reduce the size of the scans and convert them to 1-bit color (i.e. black and white, but it could also be yellow and blue at the same file size if you save it correctly). To do this, I find the smallest text in the document (or the smallest text that deserves being saved; sometimes preserving every detail of advertisements gets silly) and see how small I can shrink it before it is unreadable when converted to 1-bit color. I ruthlessly destroy greyscale artwork in the process. People who want this should get the higher quality version. (Well, sometimes I apply a different threshold to the text and the art in order to get as good a quality as can be had, but it's not gonna be great.) I use optipng to losslessly reduce the file size of the resulting images.

Transcribed/OCR'd text

If you have an optical character recognition program that is good enough to be worthwhile (look at Tesseract if you don't), use it to make a text version of what you have scanned. This makes it searchable. But please don't accept the output of your OCR blindly. Make sure that it has correctly interpreted odd fonts, faded letters, etc. Try to end up with the text in the order that someone would want to read it. So if there is a page with two columns of text, we want the whole first column, then the whole second, not some mashed up gibberish.

Or, alternatively, you can type it out by hand. Depending on your skills, disposition, and the difficulty that your scan presents to OCR, this might be the faster option.

If you post a clean scan on the web as a PDF, Google will eventually come along and do OCR on it, which you can retrieve by doing a Google search that finds the PDF. It does a pretty good job, but will generally need a good deal of cleaning up to be really something we'd want to call our own.

File Formats

Scans of book-type documents

PDF seems to be here to stay, at least for this decade or so. It is (nearly) universally readable with very few problems. It is probably the best format to offer on the web for casual browsing. We should also make the page images directly available for greater portability. This allows the 1% of people without PDF viewers to access our content. It also makes it easier for people to extract artwork or whatnot at full quality if they are not familiar with PDF manipulation tools. For really long term archival, it may be useful to store the images files in portable anymap (PNM) format, a trivial-to-read well-documented uncompressed file type. For extremely long term archival, please engrave on platinum tablets.

Scans of single-page documents

For these (flyers, perhaps), I'd be inclined to just offer the image itself. A one-page PDF doesn't offer much benefit.

Transcribed text

Plain ASCII text is the most universally readable format. It is very easy to produce. I discourage trying to reproduce the format of multicolumn pages with spaces and/or tabs. This often makes the document nonsensical to anything (person or program) that reads linearly through the file. If people want the formatting, they should go to the scans.

As a slight variant, you could use plain Unicode text. This allows for things like long dashes (—) rather than approximations such as double hyphens (--). Encoded in UTF-8, it is exactly the same as plain ASCII except for the non-ASCII characters. Avoid saving in any weird obsolete extended-ASCII format such as Windows-1252 (or even ISO 8859-1), since this requires guesswork to be interpreted correctly later. Failure generates garbage such as accented vowels when you meant to have curly quotes. If you don't know how to tell what text format you are using, see the Internet or an expert.

With substantially more work, you could produce an HTML version, but HTML is terribly fragile and I don't feel this is worthwhile. With even more work, you could produce a PDF version with actual text in it instead of images of text that approximates the look of the original document. Might be a fun challenge, but not really practical.

Copyright

Most people who have contributed to MNstf publications probably did not intend to hold copyright on their contributions. However, some certainly did and we need to be careful about this. The Minnstf board in 2008 came up with clear guidelines on how to handle copyright for Mnstf (including Minicon) publications. This was then amended in 2016. In brief:

• Images credited to an artist require us to ask the artist for permission to republish (including web posting).
• Text credited to someone, ditto.
• However, if the contribution is fannish, and we have made a good faith effort to ask for permission without getting an answer, we will assume web posting is ok. For professional contributions, we will not.
• Anything not credited is assumed to be property of Minn-stf. We will, in general, put this up on the web with some sort of permissive license.

I (Matt Strait) have found some cases not well covered by the above rules and decided to rule on them unilaterally until and unless someone complains. To whit:

• If the publication has a clear copyright statement, it gets precedence over the above rules.
• I will take the "note from the chair" or similar to automatically be MNstf property even if directly credited to someone. I feel that we are on firm ground assuming ownership here in a way that we are not for things like GoH bios.
• Text explaining where and when some event is or other similar trivial text I consider to be automatically MNstf property even if attributed to a department head. Text explaining a department's policies, procedures, etc. I also consider in this category as long as it is pretty dry. Highly creative text that nevertheless fulfills the same role should probably be checked on.
• If a program book was already on the web when I started this project, I have left it there and assumed that all copyright holders consented at the time, but only for that one instance.
• I assume that advertisers don't mind having their ads republished.

How to know if something is in the public domain

In the United States and elsewhere, large corporate interests have repeatedly been successful in extending copyright terms far beyond any reasonable measure. In the context of printed MNstf publications, the rules (simplified from a more complicated table found at copyright.cornell.edu by removing cases that aren't relevant), current as of January 2010 are:

• Published before 1 Jan 1978 (Minicons 1 - 12):
  • Published without a copyright notice: In the public domain due to failure to comply with required formalities.
  • Published with a copyright notice: Enters public domain 95 years after publication date. So the earliest a MNstf work in this era could possibly enter the public domain (automatically) is 2061, 95 years after the club was founded in 1966.
• Published between 1 Jan 1978 and 1 March 1989 (Minicons 13-23):
  • Published without a copyright notice and without subsequent registration within 5 years: In the public domain due to failure to comply with required formalities.
  • Published with a copyright notice or without one but with subsequent registration within 5 years: 70 years after the death of author for contributed works. 95 years from publication for MNstf owned works. So the earliest such a work could possibly (automatically) enter the public domain is 2048.
• Published between 1 March 1989 and the present (Minicons 24 to present): 70 years after the death of author for contributed works. 95 years from publication for MNstf owned works. (Same as above.)

The only works by MNstf in the 1978-1989 period that are registered with the copyright office are Tales of the Unanticipated #1-6 and "Maturity, three stories by Theodore Sturgeon".

"Published" refers to the date of first publication. So if artwork was used in a program book, but it wasn't original to that book, the situation can be murky.

Things also are more complicated if something was created significantly earlier than it was first published, although for works created after 1977 this is only relevant if the gap is greater than 25 years.

What we'd like

In decreasing order of preference, we'd like copyright holders to:

1. Grant Minn-stf all rights to their works. This is best because then the work is Mnstf's and we can do whatever we want with it.
2. Grant Mnstf the right to make their works available via some sort of permissive license, such as those from Creative Commons. In this case, we need to know which sorts of restrictions the copyright holder is interested in, such as:
   • Requiring that the work cannot be used commercially
   • Requiring that the work cannot be modified
   • Requiring that attribution always be given when the work is shown
3. Grant Minn-stf the right to display their works on the web while retaining full copyright restrictions.

And, orthogonally to that:

1. Grant these rights to all of their works, past and future
2. Grant these rights to all of their currently existing works
3. Grant these rights to the one work that we just digitized

Here is a letter that you can send to copyright holders asking them about these things. It's generic and generally intended for use if we have no idea how the copyright holder feels before we send it. If you know the recipient, you can probably write a shorter one that gets to the point faster, making it more likely you get a response. Try to avoid getting the answer "sure, go ahead and republish on the web" if you think you could get something more general, since this answer is very narrow and will not even allow us to publish on something very much like the web that appears 5 years from now.

Copyright answers

List copyright holders' responses in alphabetical order by last name. Check this list before sending any queries about the document you are working on. Notes:

1. Some people here may not actually have any of their works in any Mnstf publications, but have given us blanket permission just in case.
2. Please distinguish between the case of a copyright holder answering a question (e.g. "can we distribute your stuff under a Creative Commons license?") with "no" and the case where they did not answer the question at all (possibly because they weren't asked).
3. If relevant, give the approximate date that the person made their statement. It is not generally safe to assume that they apply to future works unless that was stated.

A

• Jennifer "Seven" Anderson: Grants us all rights for submitted works past and future.
• Poul Anderson: Via Greg Bear who holds/manages his copyright: Ok to web publish his text in the Minicon 17 program book with this statement: "Text by Poul Anderson is (c) copyright 1981 by Poul Anderson and is reproduced here by permission."
• Arthur Thompson, a.k.a. ATom: Deceased (1990). Geri Sullivan reports that the "Standard Fannish Arrangement is that it's okay to reproduce ATom's art for fannish (non-commercial) purposes." If his works are used in new paper publications, his wife Olive might appreciate a copy.

B

• Wayne Barlowe: Gave us permission to use the art he provided (for Minicon 43) on the web.
• Lenny Bailes: Ok with Creative Commons for his contribution to the Minicon 35 program book.
• Donna Barr: Ok with Creative Commons for her contribution to the Minicon 22 program book.
• John Berkey: Demi Berkey, who manages his estate, has given us permission to put his art in the Minicon 35 program book on the web.
• Chaz Boston Baden: Ok with Creative Commons for Minicon 38 program book contribution.
• Ben Bova: We have permission to republish his contributions to the Minicon 13 and 36 program books. No answer to CC, so all-rights-reserved assumed.
• Steven Brust (Feb 2010): good with Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike.
• Nate Bucklin (Nov 2009): "go ahead and reprint anything I wrote that you are interested in reprinting. I don't care what happens with the copyrights."
• Emma Bull (Feb 2011): We are free to use any of her illustrations for essays for any Minicon program book in any way that "might benefit Minicon and Minn-stf".
• Michael Butler: Ok with CC-BY-NC-SA for his contribution to the Minicon 18 program book. Implied that if we find other, larger, contributions, he'd want to think harder about what license to use.

C

• Bill Christ (Dec 2009): "Feel free to use anything I've written however you want to."
• Judie (A.C.) Cilcain (Curney): We have permission to use her article "Glimpses of My Apahacking History" and accompanying artwork however we like.
• Dave Crawford (March 2010): Can distribute freely for non-commercial use anything of his in any Minn-stf publication.
• Karen Cooper (late 2008): Ok with web posting. No answer about CC licensing.

D

• Kara Dalkey (Sept 2009): "I hereby grant Minn-Stf full rights to any work I have submitted for the Minicon Program Books."
• Ellen Datlow: Says "Go for it! (You have my permission.)" regarding her photo in the Minicon 39 program book. Based on the question asked, I'll take this as permission for web posting.
• Pamela Dean: see Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
• Dean Dierschow (Feb 2010): good with Creative Commons.
• David Dyer-Bennet, a.k.a. DDB (late 2008): Ok with web posting. Late 2009: Okay with CC-BY-SA for stuff my stuff in Minicon publications.
• Dan Dos Santos: For the Minicon 45 program book, he says, regarding web posting. "Of course! All I ask is that the scan you post isn't at print resolution [300dpi] like the file I provided for the actual program."
• Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet (Sept 2009): Anything in any Minicon publication may be distributed under a Creative Commons license that requires no modification, attribution and no commercial use.

E

• Alex Eisenstein (2010): Ok to republish.
• Phyllis Eisenstein (2010): Ok to republish.
• Ed Emshwiller: Copyright holder is Carol Emshwiller. She says "Yes, that's OK with me" when asked if Ed's work in the Minicon 31 book can be distributed in a way that people can "save a copy of the book, modify and/or redistribute it themselves" (CC example cited).

F

• Steve Fastner: see Fastner and Larson
• Fastner and Larson: Gave us permission to use the art they provided (for Minicon 40) on the web. Later (Feb 2010) said that we could disseminate their contributions in whatever way we'd like.
• Leslie Fish (March 2010): Ok to republish. Must have attribution. If not for profit, send her a copy or link. If for profit, she wants a cut.
• Beth Fleisher: Ok to webpost, with full copyright, her contribution to the Minicon 28 program book.
• Ken Fletcher (Jan 2010): Ok with CC licensing of Minicon publications.
• Kaja Foglio: Ok with CC licensing for her art in the Minicon 29 program book. We definitely have to ask about anything else that we find (Girl Genius stuff, for instance).
• Phil Foglio (April 2010): Ok to republish, making sure each has his signature and a copyright notice. He'd like a copy (or presumably a link).
• Brad Foster (March 2010): For any minn-stf publication, ok to republish online or on paper without asking again, as part of a complete reprinting of a past publication, with full copyright. If online, he'd appreciate being sent a link. If in print, he'd like to be mailed a copy: PO Box 165246, Irving, TX 75016.
• Giovanna Fregni: Ok with CC for Minicon 23 program book. Later gave CC permission for art in "Minicon, Reinconation, and other Minneapolis con flyers and fanzines."

G

• Terry Garey: Creative Commons BY-SA-NC ok for contributions (if any) in Minicon 18, 23, 25, 27 and 31 books.
• Deb Geisler (late 2008): Any Creative Commons license is ok, "no worries".
• Rick Gellman: We are free to redistribute his contribution to the Minicon 13 program book as we like.
• Alexis Gilliland (Dec 2009): Ok with web posting.
• Mike Glicksohn (March 2010): Ok with republishing.
• Jeanne Gomoll (Wiscon 2009): Grants MNstf the rights to "anything else of [hers that] we run across" so long as we preserve attribution.
• Kathy (Marschall) Grantham (13 May 2009): "fine to post any old Minicon programs with my art".
• Avram Grumer (March 2010): Ok with CC-BY-SA-NC.
• Fred A Levy Haskell (a.k.a. Fred Haskell) (Dec 2009): Ok with web posting, ok with CC licensing.
• delphyne joan hanke-woods (a.k.a. joan hanke-woods, a.k.a. joan woods) (April 2010): Ok to publish on the web with full copyright; ask for each republication. Would like a cut of profits, if any.

H

• Beth Hansen (Hansen-Buth) (Dec 2010): Ok to webpost, but not over 72dpi.
• Teddy Harvia (Dec 2009): We can do whatever we like with his artwork, as long as we do not etch it onto metal plates and send it into space.
• Eric Heideman (31 July 2009): We are free to republish his works as long as he is also free to republish them.
• Peter Hentges: For his contribution to the Minicon 36 program book, he's ok with Creative Commons. In fact, he says "Yes! Please publish where you see fit."
• Bill Higgins (Dec 2009): For his article in the Minicon 36 program book: "I grant Minn-stf permission to reprint the article in question in digital form or in paper form, provided it is correctly attributed to me."

J

• Karen Johnson (March 2010): We are "welcome to use" her contributions. I guess I'll conservatively assume that that means we're free to republish, but she retains copyright.
• Mary Lynn Johnson: see Mary Lynn Skirvin

K

• Sharon Kahn (Dec 2009): "Do whatever you like".
• Carol Kennedy (late 2008): Grants us all rights.
• Peg Kerr (Feb 2011): Fine with Creative Commons license for any materials we find. If we find and post more, she requests that we send her a link.
• Greg Ketter (late 2008): Grants us all rights.
• Jay Kay Klein: On the photo of Lois McMaster Bujold in the Minicon 27 program book, we may not show it on the web, but we may include it in print publications. It must clearly say "photo by Jay Kay Klein" under/near it. He notes that his copyrights will eventually be transfered to UC Riverside, where the negative for this photo now lives.
• James Kuehl (late 2008): Ok with web posting. No answer about CC licensing.
• Ellen (Al) Kufeld (March 2010): Ok with CC BY-SA-NC.

L

• Rich Larson: see Fastner and Larson
• Jody Lee: Ok to web publish her contributions to the Minicon 30 program book.
• Denny Lien (Oct 2009): "Absolutely" may put anything he wrote for Minicon Program Books, Progress Reports, or other official publications (specifically including Midwest Side Story), up on the web.
• Rachael Lininger (Feb 2010): "I was assuming that anything I did for Minicon was the equivalent of work for hire." So I think that counts as assigning copyright to us.
• Hank Lutrell: "certainly never intended that any of my fannish writing be anything other than public domain, but [for Minicon 11 program book contribution] I'll assign the copyright to Minnstf.

M

• Ken MacLeod (Feb 2010): Happy with web publishing, keeping all-rights-reserved him.
• Jason Malgren (late 2008): Grants us all rights.
• J.J. Mars: see Jacque Marshall
• Jacque Marshall (J.J. Mars) (March 2010): Ok with Creative Commons. Would appreciate notification of republishing.
• Kathy Marschall: see Kathy Grantham
• Stephan Martinière: Gave us permission to use the art he provided (for Minicon 44) on the web.
• Sue Mason (late 2008): For the Minicon 38 chapbook, Creative Commons is fine, as long as people aren't using her work for profit.
• Michael Matheny: Gives us permission to use his coffee beanie in the Minicon 29 program book. Points out that it should be credited as "Artwork: Tom Grewe. Graphic design: Michael Matheny."
• Maureen F. McHugh: Ok with Creative Commons for Minicon 35 program book contributions.
• Erin McKee (31 Oct 2009): Gave us permission to post program books with her art and release them under Creative Common licenses.
• Beth Meacham: Ok to put Minicon 32 program book contribution on web.
• Richard Mueller (Dec 2010): "Minnstf has the right to use whatever art I create for Minicon, for whatever purpose it wants to whenever it wants, including creating derivative works. I represent that all art I create for Minicon is either my own original work, or that I have secured the proper rights to any copyrighted works within my creations for Minicon to use."

N

• James Nicoll (April 2010): Free to reuse anything he's provided for Minicon.

O

• Jim (James) Odbert, now sometimes known as just Nybor: "You may use any of my art with the following 3 stipulations. 1. all art copyright nybor mystical art 2009. 2. If you make any monies I get 10%. 3. the art is used as is. No changes. It would be nice if you could send me copies of the art"
• Margaret Organ-Kean (March 2010): We're free to use art she sent us with attribution, whether we make money on it or not, with standard copyright restrictions. She'd appreciate a link to her website as appropriate.
• David Owen-Cruise (Feb 2010): Ok with CC BY-NC-SA.

P

• Robert Pasternak: We may republish his artwork in the Minicon 28 program book under Creative Commons and his artwork in the Minicon 31 program book under full copyright protections. We must ask if we find anything else.
• Lee Pelton: G. Fregni gave us permission to release his contributions to the Minicon 15 and 16 program books under Creative Commons.
• Polly Peterson (Feb 2011): Ok with Creative Commons for any articles in any Minicon program book.
• John Picacio: Gave us permission to use the art he provided (for Minicon 41) on the web.

R

• Irene Raun (Jan 2010): In reference to her Minicon 36 contribution, yes, we can post it on the web and distribute it as we like.
• Katya Reimann: For her contributions to the Minicon 36 program book, "You are very welcome to redistribute my piece and the artwork, with appropriate attribution" and if we "use the artwork separately from the article, I would ask that I be notified." (I believe that CC-BY-ND or CC-BY-NC-ND would cover this.)
• Dave Romm (14 July 2009): Grants "Minicon and/or MN-StF the rights to use any of my work for Minicon and/or MN-StF purposes"; "A Creative Commons license would be okay", but it must require attribution and not allow commercial use.
• Joel Rosenberg: Ok with Creative Commons for Minicon 36 program book contribution.
• William (Bill) Rotsler: Deceased. Geri Sullivan reports that she knows from personal conversation that it is ok to put his works in Minicon publications online for "fannish, non-commercial purposes".
• Kathy Routliffe (Nov 2010): Creative Commons.
• Susan L Ryan: "Cool with publishing Midwest Side Story on the web".

S

• Larry Sanderson (Feb 2010): Gives us permission to distribute his works under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
• Laramie Sasseville (late 2008): Ok with web posting, ok with CC license. Would appreciate a link to dreamspell.net.
• Graydon Saunders (May 2012): We may not show his contribution to the Minicon 36 program book on the web, nor anything else of his we find.
• Pasquale (Pat) Scaramuzza (Dec 2010): "Minnstf has the right to use whatever art or text I create for Minicon for whatever purpose it wants to, whenever it wants, including creating derivative works."
• Jeff Schalles (Sept 2009): Free to republish under a permissive license that requires attribution and prohibits commercial use.
• Bruce Schneier (Jan 2010): Yes, of course [we can post and freely distribute]. Thinks we should do this sort of thing without asking and just wait for people to complain if they feel that need.
• Alison Scott (Feb 2010): Creative Commons BY-NC-SA is ok. Exception: if we find any "Photoshop collages", we need to check if any elements are from works with more restrictive licenses.
• Joyce Scrivner (Oct 2009): No permission explicitly given, but she was very interested in getting Rune up on the web.
• Stu [Stuart] Shiffman (Nov 2009): "You have my official permission to reprint any of my material from Minicon publications. Just send me a copy or link!"
• Mary Lynn Skirvin (March 2010): Can use her art/writings with full copyright if (1) her signature is not altered/removed [don't know why we would] and (2) we send her a link (or copy) showing her exactly how her work is presented. She would appreciate a link to her web site, too.
• Bonnie Somdahl (Jan 2010): In person said, "Yes, of course, sure why not [etc]." I believe we can do whatever we want with no worries.
• Jerry Stearns (Feb 2010): Nothing in any Minicon publications that he needs to keep control of. Things in Rune he would like CC licensed.
• David Stever: Ok with CC for anything we find.
• Matthew Strait: Grants us all rights for submitted works past and future.
• Geri Sullivan (late 2008): Ok with web posting, ok with CC license.

T

• Richard Tatge (Dec 2009): (through Sharon), "do whatever you like".
• Matthew B Tepper (Feb 2010): "I see no problem with Minn-Stf disseminating any materials I wrote for ... actual club publications[. I grant] permission for such dissemination while, of course, retaining ownership of my material". I read this as saying that CC licensing would be ok.
• Glenn Tenhoff: CC ok for his contributions to the Minicon 35, 36 and 38 program books.
• David Thayer: see Teddy Harvia
• Bob Tucker: Deceased, but Joe Siclari of FANAC says that it he made it well know that his fannish works could be freely distributed for fannish and/or non-commerical purposes.

U

• Charles Urbach: We are welcome to post his content from the Minicon 35 and 36 program books in the context of a Minicon archive. Further, he says, "However, I need to retain the copyright to the materials, and in some cases, the copyright may now (or in the future) belong to another entity".

V

• Ray VanTilburg (Feb 2010): Fine with web posting and other republication, but explicitly requested all-rights-reserved.
• Charles Vess: Gave us permission to use the art he provided (for Minicon 42) on the web.

W

• Jo Walton (Feb 2010): Anything in a program book "may be distributed freely for non-commercial purposes, as part of the program book." Creative commons is ok. (I believe this means we must use Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works.) This does not extend to other works of hers.
• Taral Wayne (March 2010): Can republish with all-rights-reserved without asking each time as long as it is for fannish purposes. Would like to be notified when we republish.
• Alan White tells us that his contributions to the Minicon 29 program book are artwork that is freely available for non-commercial purposes.
• Kip Williams: Ok with CC-BY-SA-NC for what's in the Minicon 36 program book.
• Walter Jon Williams: We may use his photo in the Minicon 39 program book. (I take this to mean that we can reproduce it for our purposes in any medium.)
• Jack Williamson: His estate has granted us permission to show his contribution to the Minicon 11 program book on the web.
• Terri Windling (March 2010): Welcome to publish with a Creative Commons license.
• Laurel Winter (Feb 2010): "you have my permission to use my work under the creative commons umbrella"
• Kate Worley: James Vance has given us permission to web-post her piece in the Minicon 18 program book.
• Patricia Wrede (Feb 2010): Donates Minn-stf the copyright on GoH bios. If we find any works of fiction, we must ask about that separately.

Y

• Jim [James] Young (Nov 2009): Fine with web posting.

People from whom we need an answer

Bold indicates people who could release a particularly large amount of content. The numbers after people's names indicate how many people away from a full release a program book is. "C" means that this person is needed for the cover.

Some of these people are dead. Who owns their copyright is then either given in their will, or if it didn't say (likely) has some default, perhaps their next of kin (someone would need to look into what Minnesota (or whatever state they lived in) law is on this point). If they are professional writers, their literary executive should know the answer.

This list is out of date in so far as for all fannish contributions we now assume permission if we have asked and not gotten an answer. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to still get explicit permission.

• Raymond H. Allard (Ray Allard) (3) -- asked and got no reply
• Larry Becker (3, 1)
• Rob Berry (C/4)
• Glenn Blacow -- deceased (4)
• Denise Boie (C/1, 8)
• Loren Botner (4)
• Tim Boxell (1)
• Cathy Buburuz (8)
• Todd Cameron Hamilton (4)
• David Charles Cummer (4)
• Derrick Dasenbrock (3, 4)
• Gordon Dickson -- deceased -- Dave Wixon (4)
• Caryl Dixon (4)
• Heidi Eckroth (4)
• Four people whose work is probably all copyright Harlan Ellison: (1)
  • Christer Akerberg
  • Michael Amendolia
  • Chris Cuffaro
  • Thomas De Soto
• EssJay / S. Jay (4)
• Steve Fooiland (8)
• James Garrison (8)
• Mike Gilbert -- deceased (4)
• Jay Gutzman (8)
• Greg Johnson (4)
• Mary Kay Kare (4)
• Amy Monte (4)
• Jason Parker (4)
• Marge B Simon (8)
• Dan Steffan (2)
• Frank Stodolka (3)
• Richard Stuefer (4)
• Brian Tiemann (4)
• TL (3)
• Kurt Vonn Gutzman (8)
• M Christine Valada (8)
• Reed Waller (4, 2, 2)
• Dave Wixon (4, 2, 3)

Web posting

To get a document on the web, you have to be some sort of Mnstf webmaster. Currently:

• Matt, Anna, and DD-B can edit any Minnstf page (and maybe some other people?).

Currently here's where things are:

• Main Minicon page, which links to:
  • Each Minicon website that has ever existed, i.e. Minicon 30 through the present, for instance, the Minicon 40 site
  • A document repository for each Minicon before that, for instance, Minicon 24

The main Minicon page says, before its link to the page for all older Minicons, "We didn't have websites for Minicons prior to Minicon 30 or at least we can't seem to find the archives right now." It is pretty clear from the Minicon 30 program book that it was the first, though. Nevertheless, it is, technologically speaking, possible that Minicon 29 (1994) had a website -- and perhaps we were extremely disorganized and forgot about it. It is even vaguely possible that there was a web page for Minicon 28 (1993), although it would have had to be set up before CERN made the WWW officially free technology, or for Minicon 27 (1992), although it would have had to have been hosted at CERN or on one of the very first webservers in the US, or for Minicon 26 (1991), although Tim Berners-Lee would have had to have written it. Minicons before 30 might also have had things analogous to websites for the time, such as Gopher sites or collections of documents available via FTP or on BBSes. This is true for all Minicons starting with Minicon 3, before which no packet-switched network existed (the first two nodes of ARPANET being connected on 21 November 1969).

Anyway, the point of all of this is to say that this project is also interested in any electronic-only publications or pseudo-publications that might turn up from Minicons before 30.

Work completed

Minicon program books

Overview

Here's a table for an overview, followed by details. The columns are:

• Have copy: self-explanatory
• Processed:
  • For books without clean digital copies, whether the books have been scanned and the scans processed into a form suitable for web posting (cropped, rotated, noise removed, made into a PDF, etc.).
  • For books with clean digital copies, whether those copies have been verified to be faithful reproductions of the paper version, and, if necessary, beaten into a form suitable for web posting (e.g. made into a PDF if they are some odd format, version made with images downsampled if the original is insanely high res, etc.)
• Posting ok: whether we have permission at least to republish on the web
• Sharing ok: whether we have permission to allow people who find the book on the web to re-share (under any terms, which could be public domain, Creative Commons, or something else). I made this column to organize myself to send things to be posted at fanac.org. Each entry with "yes", "text ok" or "art ok" should note:
  • PD for public domain
  • CC for Creative Commons
  • PD/CC for mixed public domain and Creative Commons
  • MX for any sort of situation in which the whole book can be shared, but with some different mixed scheme. It turns out that this last case hasn't happened yet, but could if a book was Creative Commons except for some art which falls under "free to use for fannish purposes" or similar.
• Posted: Whether the program books are on the web
• Searchable: Whether the web posting of the program book includes either an original PDF with real text in it (not images of text) or a transcription of scans
• Physically archived: Whether the scans (or original files) are stored on some offline media. These should eventually land in the archives or they don't count, but it can be "yes" even if they aren't there yet. (Update 2017 [still valid in 2023]: Is this still a good goal to have? Probably the Internet Archive has a longer expected lifetime than any physical digital media we might put in a filing cabinet, so maybe a better goal would be to check that it is archived there.)

#	have copy	processed	posting ok	sharing ok	posted	searchable	physically archived
1	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, PD	Yes	Yes	No
2	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, PD	Yes	Yes	Yes
3	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, PD	Yes	Yes	Yes
4	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, PD	Yes	Yes	Yes
5	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, PD	Yes	Yes	Yes
6	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, PD	Yes	Yes	Yes
7	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, PD	Yes	Yes	Partial
8	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, PD	Yes	Yes	Yes
9	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, PD	Yes	Yes	Yes
10	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, PD	Yes	Yes	Yes
11	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	Yes	Yes
12	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	Yes	Yes
13	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	Yes	Yes
15	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	Yes	Yes
16	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	Yes	Yes
17	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	No	Yes
14	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	No	Yes
19	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, CC	Yes	Yes	Yes
18	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	No	Yes
20	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, CC/PD	Yes	No	Yes
21	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, CC/PD	Yes	No	Yes
22	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, CC/PD	Yes	No	Yes
23	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, CC/PD	Yes	No	Yes
24	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	No	Yes
25	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, CC	Yes	No	Yes
26	Yes	Yes	Yes	yes, CC/PD	Yes	No	Yes
27	Yes	Yes	Partial*	Partial	Partial	No	Yes
28	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	No	Yes
29	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	No	Yes
30	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, PD/CC	Yes	No	Yes
31	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	No	Yes
32	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	No	Yes
33	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	Yes
34	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	No	Yes
35	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	Yes
36	Yes	Yes	Partial*	Partial	Partial	No	Yes
37	Yes	see note	Yes	Partial	Yes	Yes	Yes
38	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	No	Yes
39	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	No	Yes
40	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	Yes	Yes
41	Yes	Yes	text ok*	Partial	Partial	Yes	Yes
42	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	Yes
43	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	Yes	Yes
44	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	Yes
45	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	Yes
46	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	Yes
47	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	No
48	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	No	No
49	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	No	No
50	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	No
51	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	No
52	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	No
53	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	No
54	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	No
55	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	No
56	Yes	Yes	Yes	text ok, CC	Yes	Yes	No

* These have parts that we have specifically been told not to republish, or, in the case of Minicon 41, have decided not to ask.

These detailed lists have not been updated to reflect the board's 2016 policy on copyright which allows web posting of fannish material when we haven't been able to get an answer from a copyright holder

1-12

• The program books for Minicon 1-5 were published between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice and are thus public domain.
• The text of the Minicon 6 book was published between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice and is thus public domain. Some of the art does have copyright notices. For a full web posting, we would need permission from:
  • Tim Boxell (art)
• The program books for Minicon 7-10 were published between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice and is thus public domain.
• The Minicon 11 book has a copyright statement with the clause "Upon publication, all rights revert to the author or artist". We need:
  • Ok to distribute fannishly: Bob Tucker, page 4, 27-26 -- the page numbering is screwed up...
  • Assigns us copyright: Hank Luttrell, pages 21-22
  • Ok for web: Jack Williamson, pages 11-13
  • Reed Waller for art on pages 7 and 26
  • Dan Steffan, page 26 (or 28, depending on how you count)
• The Minicon 12 book has a copyright statement with the clause "All rights revert to the individual writers and artists" and so here are the people who we would need consent from to post it on the web in its entirety:
  • Ok to republish: Mike Glicksohn
  • Mike Gilbert
  • EssJay (how the name appears in the artist credits) / S. Jay (how the name appears as a byline)
  • Glenn Blacow
  • John Huotari (poem on page 3)

13, 15-17, 14

• The Minicon 13 book has a copyright statement with the clause "All rights revert to the artists and authors". Note credits on both pages 2 and 16. We need:
  • Ok to do as we like: Rick Gellman, for text on pages 9-10
  • Ok to republish: Ben Bova, for text on pages 15-16
  • Ok to share fannishly: Bob Tucker, for art on page 22
  • Ok with CC: David Stever, for the Krissy bio
  • Reed Waller, for his illustration on page 8
  • Dave Wixon, for text on pages 23-24
• The Minicon 15 program book has a copyright statement with the clause "Upon publication all rights revert to the author or artist" and needs these people to consent for a full web posting:
  • Ok with CC: Lee Pelton
  • Ok with CC: David Stever
• The Minicon 16 program book has a copyright statement with the clause "Upon publication all rights revert to the author or artist" and needs these people to consent for a full web posting:
  • Ok with CC: J.J. Mars (art)
  • Ok with CC: Lee Pelton (bio)
  • RayAllard a.k.a. Raymond H Allard for art on the back cover
  • Dave Wixon (bio)
  • Frank Stodolka (bio)
• The Minicon 17 book has a copyright statement with the clause "All rights revert to the owners upon publication". We need:
  • Ok to web publish: Poul Anderson for text on page 6
  • Ok to reproduce: Joan Hanke-Woods for art on page 11 and the page after the center fold
  • Ok with CC: David Stever-Schnoes for text on pages 14-15
  • Ok with CC: Laramie Sasseville for centerfold.
  • Public domain: John Robey for text on pages 10-11
  • Larry Becker for illustrations on pages 1, 13, 15, the page 2 after the center fold and the inside back cover
• For the Minicon 14 program book and a copyright statement saying "(c) Minnesota Science Fiction Society (It's all yours, guys!)". What does that mean? Since we don't know, this falls under Minn-stf's October 2011 copyright policy.
  • Ok with CC: David Stever ("So Then Welcome to Saint Paul" text)
  • Taken to be OK: John Bartelt (bio)
  • Taken to be OK: George "Lan" Laskowski (bio)

19, 18, 20-23

• The Minicon 19 program book has an unqualified copyright statement on the inside front cover that makes everything except possibly the front cover MNstf's (and we're good on the cover).
• The Minicon 18 program book has a copyright statement with the clause "All rights revert to individual authors and artists" and needs these people to consent for a full web posting:
  • OK with CC: Terry A. Garey
  • OK with CC: Dean Dierschow
  • OK with CC: Matthew B Tepper
  • Ok with CC: Terri Windling
  • Ok with CC: Michael Butler -- art -- page 5
  • Ok to do as we like: Jerry Stearns
  • Ok to do as we like: Emma Bull -- art -- pages 3, 6, 11, 12
  • Ok to republish: Dave Crawford
  • Ok to republish: Karen Johnson
  • Ok to webpost: Kate Worley -- text -- page 3
  • Reed Waller -- art -- page 1
  • Caryl Dixon -- text -- pages 6, 7
  • David Cummer -- art -- page 9
  • Richard Stuefer -- art -- page 10
• The Minicon 20 program book, except for text by Kara Dalkey and art by Laramie Sasseville, was published between 1978 and March 1989, has no copyright notices, and was not registered with the copyright office and so is public domain.
• The Minicon 21 program book, except for art by Rich Larson and Laramie Sasseville, was published between 1978 and March 1989, has no copyright notices, and was not registered with the copyright office and so is public domain.
• The Minicon 22 program book, except for art by Erin McKee and Donna Barr, was published between 1978 and March 1989, has no copyright notices, and was not registered with the copyright office and so is public domain. Donna and Erin have given permission to use CC for their art.
• The Minicon 23 program book was published between 1978 and March 1989, has no copyright notices, and was not registered with the copyright office and so is public domain, except for:
  • Ok with CC: Inside back cover art by Giovanna Fregni

24

• The Minicon 24 has no copyright statement. Since it was published after 1 March 1989, copyright is automatic, but without a statement we don't know who holds it or what the conditions are, so it falls under the board's Oct 2011 copyright policy.
  • Ok with CC: Peg Kerr
  • Ok with CC: Polly Peterson
  • Assumed to be ok: Sally Morem, Larry Niven bio, page 6
  • Assumed to be ok: Dex [that's all I've got], art
  • Assumed to be ok: Reed Waller, art page 3
  • Assumed to be ok: Gail Catherine, art
  • Assumed to be ok: Rob Ihinger, Harry Harrison bio, page 26

25

• The Minicon 25 program book simply says that it is copyright Minn-stf.

26

• The Minicon 26 program book is believed to be copyright-safe for web publishing. It has the following to say about copyright "No maps, illustrations,or other portions of this book may be reproduced in any form with guilt feelings (except where expressly copyrighted, which require permission of the artist/writer)." Sounds like we're ok then. The parts that are expressly copyrighted are: (1) photo by Fred A Levy Haskell (we have permission) (2) text by Jeff Schalles (we have permission) (3) art by Stu Shiffman on page 28 (we have permission).

27

The Minicon 27 program book has the irritating copyright clause "All rights reserved under various and sundry agreements and conventions" (without the "no guilt feelings" bit from Minicon 26). What does that mean? Since we don't know, this falls under Minn-stf's October 2011 copyright policy.

• Ok to republish: Mary Lynn Skirvin: pages 5, 9, 13, 31
• Donates copyright: Patricia C. Wrede, pages 15, 16
• OK with CC: Terry A. Garey, pages 19, 20
• OK with CC: Steven Brust, pages 20, 21
• Assumed to be ok: Steven Goldin, pages 28, 29 (text)
• Not ok for web publishing: Jay Kay Klein, page 15 (photo)
• Assumed to be ok: Mike Wilmer, page 19 (photo)

28

The Minicon 28 program book has the irritating copyright clause "All rights reserved under various and sundry agreements and conventions." What does that mean? Since we don't know, this falls under Minn-stf's October 2011 copyright policy.

• Ok with web posting (with conditions): Beth Hansen (yes, not the same as Ranson above): art page 19, 20
• Ok with web posting: Beth Fleisher: art page 9
• Ok with CC: Laramie Sasseville, art
• Ok with web posting (with conditions): Mary Lynn Skirvin, art
• Ok with CC: Robert Pasternak: art page 15
• Ok with CC: Geri Sullivan (text)
• Ok with CC (with conditions): Pamela Dean (text)
• Assumed to be ok: Peggy Ranson: art pages 4, 6, 13, 16, 24, 45
• Assumed to be ok: Chris Schneider: art page 38
• Assumed to be ok: John Gabarron: art pages 39, 51
• Assumed to be ok: Denise Boie: art, back cover
• Assumed to be ok: Cathy Buburuz: art 43
• Assumed to be ok: Mary Hanson-Roberts: art pages 19, 41, 47, 53

29

• The Minicon 29 program book has a copyright statement with the clause "Illustrations remain the property of the respective artists" needs these people to give their consent for a full web posting:
  • Art:
    • Ok to republish: Phil Foglio
    • Ok to republish: Brad Foster
    • Ok to republish: Margaret Organ-Kean
    • Ok to republish: Taral [Wayne]
    • Ok to republish: Alan White
    • Ok to republish: Michael Matheny
    • Ok with web posting (with conditions): Beth Hansen
    • Ok with CC: Kaja Foglio
    • Denise Boie
    • Cathy Buburuz
    • Steve Fooiland
    • Jay Gutzman
    • Kurt Vonn Gutzman
    • James Garrison
    • Marge B Simon
  • Photos:
    • M Christine Valada

30

• The Minicon 30 book has the clause "Illustrations remain the property of the respective artists". We need:
  • Ok with web posting: GoH Jody Lee for her illustrations on page 64-67
  • Derrick Dasenbrock for his t-shirt illustration on page 15
  • "TL" (artist sig) for their illustration on page 40
  • Larry Becker for reproduction of "Dick Safety's SAFE SEX Tips" on page 85

31

• The Minicon 31 program book has the clause "Illustrations remain the property of the respective artists".
  • Ok with CC: Ed Emshwiller, whose art is copyright Carol Emshwiller, cover, 13, 21. 49, 50
  • Ok with CC: Ken Fletcher
  • Ok with CC: David Dyer-Bennet
  • Ok to republish: Robert Pasternak, 7
  • Ok to republish: Stu Shiffman
  • Derrick Dasenbrock, 8, 9, 12, 23
  • Amy Monte, 30
  • Brian Tiemann, 32
  • Heidi Eckroth, 36, 37

32

• The Minicon 32 program book has the clause "Artwork and articles remain the property of the respective creators" and needs these contributers to consent for a full web posting (other text in this book credited to specific people is deemed not to fall under "articles", although this is not really well defined):
  • Ok with CC: Kathy Routliffe (70-85)
  • Ok to republish: Phyllis Eisenstein (60, 61, 62)
  • Ok with CC: Eric Heideman (38-59)
  • Ok to do as we like: Jerry Stearns (63, 64)
  • Ok to web post: Tappan King and/or Beth Meacham (86, 87)
  • Rob Berry (front cover, 3)
  • Loren Botner (34, 35)
  • Greg Johnson (68, 69)
  • Jason Parker (90, 91)

33

• The Minicon 33 program book (or souvenir book, really) is on the web. It is there both in the original PDF form -- where ads are overlayed with "F.P.O.", the color cover is rendered in black and white, and overall, only about half of the pages look exactly the same as the print version -- and also in a version that uses scans to faithfully reproduce the paper version. It has a copyright statement with the clause "Illustrations remain the property of the respective artists"

34

• We have the Minicon 34 program book in a nice PDF from Jeff. It has a copyright statement with the clause "Illustrations remain the property of the respective artists". We're good except for:
  • Art on page 17 by Crystal Marvig. However, that's just a very small reproduction of a Minicon 24 advertisement (looks like a low-res monochrome scan embedded in the PDF), so, given that Crystal is deceased and therefore hard to ask, I'm going to claim that that's fair use.
  • Art on the cover and page 1 by Denise Boie.

35

• We have the Minicon 35 program book (or souvenir book really; there's no programming information) in a nice PDF from Jeff. It has a copyright statement with the clause "Essays and illustrations remain the property of the respective writers and artists." Here's the list of copyright checks that it would need for a full web posting:
  • Ok with CC: Maureen F. McHugh (text)
  • Ok with CC: Lenny Bailes (text)
  • Ok to do as we like: Jerry Stearns (text)
  • Ok with web: Charles Urbach (art: 3, 7)
  • Ok with CC: Glenn Tenhoff (art: 10, 13, 17, 21)
  • Ok with web: John Berkey (art: cover, 1, 2, 8)

36

• The Minicon 36 program book is absurdly large. It has a copyright statement with the clause "Illustrations and articles remain the property of the respective artists and authors." Here is the list of copyright checks that it needs:
  • Assigns us copyright: Rachael Lininger
  • Ok to do as we wish: Judie Cilcain (art and text)
  • Ok to do as we wish: Neil Rest
  • Ok to redistribute with attribution: Katya Reimann
  • Ok with CC: Kip Williams
  • Ok with CC: David Owen-Cruise
  • Ok with CC: Avram Grumer
  • Ok with CC: Laurel Winter
  • Ok with CC: Alison Scott
  • Ok with CC: Joel Rosenberg (text): 61, 62
  • Ok with CC: Peter Hentges (text): 64
  • Ok with CC: Glenn Tenhoff (art): 72
  • Ok with CC (ND): Jo Walton
  • Ok to republish: Leslie Fish
  • Ok to republish: James Nicoll
  • Ok to republish: Ben Bova
  • Ok to republish: Phyllis Eisenstein
  • Ok with web: Ken MacLeod
  • Ok with web: Charles Urbach (art): cover (-1), 34, 57
  • Not ok: Graydon Saunders (28)
  • Todd Cameron Hamilton (art): 49, 59
  • Gordon Dickson (text): 51, 52, 53, 54
  • Mary Kay Kare (text): 55
  • Dave Wixon (text): 63, 64, 65, 66

37-39

• A PDF of the Minicon 37 program book is on the web. However, it would be nice to have a scan as well as this "proper" PDF to reliably show how the print version looks. Some fonts are a bit different, and various things are rather pixelated in the PDF, but not so much in print. It has the copyright clause "Illustrations and articles remain the property of their respective artists and authors."
• The Minicon 38 program book has the copyright clause "Illustrations remain the property of the respective artists."
  • Ok with CC: Glenn Tenhoff (art pages 18, 26, 28)
  • Ok with CC: Ken Fletcher
  • Ok with web posting: Alexis Gilliland
  • Sue Mason for lots of art
• The Minicon 39 program book has no copyright statement, so falls under the board's Oct 2011 copyright policy.
  • Ok with CC: Chaz Boston Baden (photo page 15)
  • Ok with use: Walter Jon Williams (photo page 4)
  • Ok with web-posting: Ray VanTilburg (art, cover)
  • Ok with web-posting: Ellen Datlow (photo page 10)
  • Taken to be ok: Riawa Smith (art page 14, 16)

40-49

• The Minicon 40 program book has no copyright statement. The PDF is a little funky and should eventually be fixed up with scans.
• The Minicon 41 program book has no copyright statement. For a full posting we would need permission of (all of these are Harlan Ellison photos and probably copyright him; it's probably easier/safer to just not try):
  • Christer Akerberg (photo pages 7, 8)
  • Chris Cuffaro (photo page 7)
  • Michael Amendolia (photo page 8)
  • Thomas De Soto (photo page 10)
• The Minicon 42 program book is on the web. It has no copyright statement.
• The Minicon 43 program book is on the web. It has no copyright statement.
• The Minicon 44 program book is on the web. It has no copyright statement.
• The Minicon 45 program book is on the web. I needed to degrade Dan Dos Santos's art to make it postable and in the process the fonts on those pages changed. Ah well. It has no copyright statement.
• The Minicon 46 program book is on the web. It has a copyright statement stating that it is CC licensed!
• The Minicon 47 program book is on the web.
• The Minicon 48 program book is on the web.
• The Minicon 49 program book is on the web.

50-

• The Minicons 50-56 program books are all on the web.

Minicon pocket programs

• No pocket programs prior to Minicon 33 is on the web (of course, not every Minicon had a pocket program, but certainly some of these did).
• The Minicon 33 pocket program is on the web, but:
  • The outer pages are in an oddly scrambled order, no doubt due to how it was printed (the inner pages are in reading order).
  • The CONvergence ad is overlayed with "F.P.O.", which is not how it appears in print.
  • Other ad-type things are of lower quality than how they appear in print.
• The Minicon 34 pocket program is on the web.
• No pocket programs from Minicons 35-37 are on the web
• The Minicon 38 pocket program is digitized, but has art that needs a copyright query.
• The Minicon 39-42 pocket programs are on the web.
• The Minicon 43 pocket program, minus Wayne Barlowe's art, is on the web.
• Starting with Minicon 44, all pocket programs are on the web in their entirety (as of Minicon 53)

Minicon progress reports

• The Minicon 3 PR2 has been scanned, processed, web-posted, and the scan has been burned to CD for the archives.
• The Minicon 6 PR2 has been scanned, processed and web-posted.
• The Minicon 31 PR1 and PR2 are on the web, although only in text format and not as mailed.
• Five issues of Minicon 32's Minicon Monthly, which I guess filled the PR niche, are on the web. They imply the existence of at least one more issue which is not on the web, but we know that it didn't end up really being monthly.
• No Minicon 33 PRs are on the web
• The Minicon 34 PR2 and PR3 are on the web, although in text format and not as mailed, and most of the images are broken.
• The Minicon 35 PR1 and PR2 are on the web.
• The Minicon 36 PR is on the web. Also the Minicon 36 flyer, which seems rather PRish.
• The Minicon 37 PR1 and PR2 are on the web.
• The Minicon 38 PR2 and PR3 are on the web.
• The Minicon 39 PR2 is on the web. The pages are in print-and-fold order; it would be nice to have them in a view-it-on-the-web order.
• The Minicon 40 PR2 is on the web. PR1 isn't.
• The Minicon 41 PR2 is on the web. PR1 isn't. I'm pretty sure there wasn't a PR3.
• All PRs for Minicons 42 and following are on the web (as of Minicon 54)

Bozo Bus Tribune (Minicon at-con newsletter)

All issues for the BBT starting with Minicon 43 are up on the web (as of Minicon 56).

What print issues do we have in the archives?

• M15: Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Extra (two copies of Friday, Saturday and Extra)
• M16: 1 (two copies), 2, 3 (two copies) - calls itself "volume 3", which is confusing. Did it exist at Minicon 13 and we've lost all of those? Or is this intentional fan misnumbering?

...

• M14, "Pig's Eye Landing Daily Rune": Friday, Saturday, Sunday (two copies each) (probably the full set)

...

• M28 (the first year of [nearly] continuous publication): 1-3 (two copies each) (full set)
• M29: 1-5 + Tattler (two copies each) (full set)
• M30: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M31: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M32: 1-5 (two copies each) (full set)
• M33: 1-6 (two copies each) (full set)
• M34: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M35: 1-3 (two copies each) (full set)
• M36: 1-5 (two copies each) (full set)
• M37: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M38: 1-5 (two copies each) (full set)
• M39: 1-5 (two copies each) (full set)
• M40: There was none, although there were a few less organized at-con newsletter things -- to be collected.
• M41: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M42: 1-3 (two copies of #1 and #3, one of #2) (full set?) and the Daily Howler
• M43: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M44: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set) - called the Medallion Hunt Bulletin with a Bozo Bug Tribune inset
• M45: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M46: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M47: 1-4 + Hugo special + filk special (two copies each) (full set)
• M48: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M49: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M50: 1-5 (two copies each) (full set)
• M51: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M52: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M53: 1-4 (two copies each) (full set)
• M54: 1-4 + the special medallion newsletter (two copies each) (full set)
• M55: 1-3 (two copies each) (full set)

Minicon chapbooks, etc.

• A flyer advertising Minicon 1 has been digitized and transcribed. The images and transcription have been posted to the web.
• A flyer advertising Minicon 2 has been digitized, transcribed and posted to the web. The scan has been burned to CD for the archives.
• A flyer advertising Minicon 3 has been digitized, transcribed and posted to the web. The scan has been burned to CD for the archives.
• The Minicon 38 Sue Mason chapbook is on the web.
• The Minicon 39 Deb Geisler chapbook is on the web.

Rune

NOTE: #7 was the first to be called "Rune". Before that, it was the "Minnesota Science Fiction Society Newsletter". In the grand tradition, there's a fractionally numbered issue, plus an issue with two numbers, plus at least one parody issue, at *least*, to make it difficult to know when we've got them all.

"Public domain" means the issues is in the public domain, entirely copyright MinnSTF, or entirely copyright MInnSTf except for a few explicitly copyrighted art pieces.

"Reversion" means that the issue has the statement "copyright reverts to authors/artists" or similar. I'm pretty sure this wording is nonsensical (that's not how copyright works), but anyway, we are hesitant, as a club, to post these online because it's not clear whether the contributors were giving permission only for a limited paper run, or for unlimited copies in any format.

(Quite possibly there is an issue or two in there that is all clear due to work on securing permissions for Minicon program books. Unfortunately, just figuring that out will be a good chunk of work, so it isn't likely to happen soon.)

"Web era" means that the issue was produced in modern times when it is expected that everything will go up on the web, so contributors are assumed to be fine with their work appearing on the web.

Issue	Scanned?	On mnstf.org?	Copyright	Notes
1				No known copies
2				No known copies
3				No known copies
4				No known copies
5	Yes	Yes	Public domain
6	Yes	Yes	Public domain
7	Yes	Yes	Public domain
8	Yes	Yes	Public domain
9			Public domain
10	Yes	Yes	Public domain
11			Public domain
12	Yes	Yes	Public domain
13	Yes	Yes	Public domain
14	Yes	Yes	Public domain
15				No known copies
16	Yes		Public domain
17	Yes	Yes	Public domain
18	Yes		Public domain
19	Yes		Public domain
20	Yes	Yes	Public domain
21	Yes	Yes	Public domain
22	Yes		Public domain
23	Yes	Yes	Public domain
24			Public domain
25[a]	Yes	Yes	Public domain	Sept 1971
25[b]	Yes	Yes	Public domain	March 1972 -- From #27, we know this was just a misnumbered #26
27			Public domain
28			Public domain
29	Yes		Public domain
30				No known copies
31	Yes		Public domain
32			Public domain
33	Yes		Public domain
34	Yes		Public domain
35	Yes	Yes	Public domain
36	Yes		Public domain
37	Yes		Public domain
37 1/2	Yes	Yes	Public domain
38	Yes		Reversion
39	Yes		Reversion
40	Yes		Reversion
41	Yes		Reversion
42	Yes		Reversion
43	Yes		Reversion
44	Yes		Reversion
45	Yes		Reversion
46	Yes		Reversion
47	Yes		Reversion
48	Yes		Reversion
49	Yes		Reversion
50	Yes		Reversion
51	Yes		Reversion
52	Yes		Reversion
53	Yes		Reversion
54	Yes		Reversion
55	Yes		Reversion
56	Yes		Reversion
57	Yes		Reversion
58	Yes		Reversion
RUIN	Yes		Public domain	Probably between 58 and 59
59	Yes		Reversion
60	Yes		Reversion
61	Yes		Reversion
62	Yes		Reversion
63	Yes		Reversion
64	Yes		Reversion
65+66			Reversion	One issue
67	Yes		Public domain
68	Yes		Reversion
69	Yes		Reversion
70	Yes		Reversion
71	Yes		Public domain
72	Yes	Yes	Public domain
73	Yes	Yes	Public domain
74	Yes	Yes	Public domain
STREWN			Public domain
75	Yes		Reversion	Cover says "Stroon 0"
76	Yes		Reversion
77	Yes		Reversion
78			Reversion
79			Reversion
80	Yes		Reversion
81	Yes		Reversion
82	Yes	Yes	Reversion
83	Yes		Reversion
84	Yes		Reversion
85	Yes		Reversion
[86]	Digital orig		Reversion	1998, never printed or distributed, have PDF
86	Yes		Reversion	2002
87	Digital orig	Yes	Web era
88	Digital orig	Yes	Web era
89	Digital orig	Yes	Web era
90	Digital orig	Yes	Web era
91	Digital orig	Yes	Web era
92	Digital orig	Yes	Web era

Einblatt

All Einblatts held in the archives, plus some more, are scanned and available at http://mnstf.org/einblatt/ (now as of Sept 2023, we found more for the archives, but haven't scanned them yet)

T-shirts

An old Minneapolis in '73 shirt is up here: [1]

The Minnstf Movers shirt us up here: [2]

The Millenium Fallcon/ditto 12, Not-Anokon 3/'85, and Reinconation 2 shirts are up on their archival pages. Did any other non-Minicon cons have a t-shirt? Don't know. I couldn't find any evidence in the currently accessible information online that any did, but it wouldn't be too surprising. I'm nearly totally sure that none since 2005 have, though.

Here's the status of Minicon shirts. Since according to the Minicon 16 program book, the first Minicon shirt was at Minicon 11, the table starts there.

#	Was one	posted
11	yes, see M16	yes, although possibly what we have is the M16 reprint of the M11 shirt
12	yes, in so far as shirts were sold, see M16. Also a write-up of the state of Minicon 13 by Dave Wixon makes reference to "last year's shirts", which suggests Minicon 12 had a shirt (but I'm not convinced -- it could easily mean "the shirts we sold last year", which were still M11's shirts). The M12 PR2 says "we will be offering for sale... a special MINICON commemorative t-shirt ... The shirt features Ken Fletcher cartoons on both front and back." Sounds like the M11 shirt.	Not clear if there was a unique shirt for this year
13	Yes	Yes
15	Yes	Yes
16	Yes	Yes, well, 1 of the 6 designs, anyway, and examples of the other two pieces of art
17	Yes	Yes, and variant artwork by Laramie
14	yes, program book tells you to buy one. Probably not specific to M14 since they're called "vintage", but Scott Raun attests that every Minicon since 1980 had a unique shirt.	Not clear if there was a unique shirt for this year
19	Yes	Yes, both designs
18	Yes	Yes
20	Yes	Yes, both designs
21	Yes	Yes
22	Yes	Yes
23	Yes	Yes
24	Yes	Yes, and a clean copy of the art on the back
25	Yes	Yes, and also unused art submitted for it
26	Yes	Yes, and also unused art submitted for it
27	Yes	Yes
28	Yes	Yes, and the volunteer shirt, and a sweatshirt
29	Yes	Yes, and the volunteer shirt
30	Yes	Yes, and the volunteer shirt
31	Yes	Yes, two of them, and the volunteer shirt.
32	Yes	Yes, the 4 known designs
33	Yes	Yes, two of them. I don't know of any more. Also a volunteer shirt.
34	Yes	Yes
35	Yes	Yes
36	Yes	Yes
37	Yes	Yes
38	Yes	Yes
39	Yes	Yes, and a clean copy of the art
40	Yes	Yes
41	Yes	yes, and a clean copy of the art
42	Yes	Yes
43	Yes	Yes
44	Yes	Yes
45	Yes	yes, both the long and short sleeve designs
46	Yes	yes, both designs
47	Yes	Yes
48	Yes	Yes, but we also sold a hoodie with the program book cover art
49	Yes	Yes
50	Yes	Yes
51	Yes	yes, and a clean copy of the art
52	Yes	yes, but not photos of the actual shirt
53	Yes	Yes
54	Yes	No
55	Yes	No
56	Yes	No