MinDocDigPro

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

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

There are two major challenges:

Actually doing all the scanning
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 so that the smallest text is easily readable and artwork does not lose detail. As a rough guideline, use at least 300dpi. Or use whatever the highest resolution your scanner supports is as long as that does not make things excessively slow. (Matt says: 600dpi for me is very slow to scan and very slow to work with, so while I've done some at 600dpi, I now start with 300dpi.)

Here is an example showing the difference between 600 and 300 dpi. It is detail from the Minicon 2 program book cover. The displayed area is about 7mm wide. Detail at 600 dpi is clearly lost (or muddied) at 300 dpi. One might quibble about whether this detail is worth saving (it is quite probably encoding only artifacts of the printing process rather than intent of the artist), so use your own judgment.

Scanning in color is a good idea, even with black and white content. This is because a lot of old printing 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.

Also 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.

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, four useful quality/detail levels that you can end up with:

Raw scans: Advantage: A person seeing these has the most confidence that she is seeing the document as it originally looked.; Disadvantage: Very large file sizes.
Cleaned-up high-quality scans: Advantage: Generally looks better than a raw scan.; Disadvantages: Still fairly large files. Some detail may be inadvertently lost.
Scans reduced to the smallest readable size: Advantage: Small file size while still showing all layout.; Disadvantages: Harder to read, artwork is washed out.
Transcribed/OCR'd text: Advantages: Very small file sizes, can be searched, indexed by search engines, read by blind people, etc.; Disadvantage: Nearly all formatting is lost. Relatively large amount of work to produce.

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.

Cleaned-up high-quality scans

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

To produce these, 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.)

Transcribed/OCR'd text

If you have access to an optical character recognition program that is good enough to be worthwhile (look at Tesseract if you don't), please 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. Also, 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 the first line of each, then the second line of each, etc.

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.

Note that 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 also, generally, very easy to produce. I discourage trying to reproduce the format of each page 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, I'd say.

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 or UTF-16, it is exactly the same as plain ASCII except for the non-ASCII characters. Please avoid saving in any extended-ASCII format such as Windows-1252 (or even ISO 8859-1), since to be interpreted correctly later, the set used needs to be explicitly stated or guessed heuristically. Failure to do this generates all sorts of garbage, such as accented vowels when you meant a closing double quote. If you don't know how to tell what text format you are using, please see the Internet or an expert.

With substantially more work, you could produce an HTML version, which would allow for formatting without breaking up the structure of the text. I don't feel this is worth the effort, but have at it if it amuses you.

With even more substantial 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:

Images credited to an artist require us to ask the artist for permission to republish (including web posting)
Text credited to someone, ditto.
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 corner cases and decided to rule on them unilaterally until and unless someone complains. To whit:

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 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:

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.
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
Grant Minn-stf the right to display their works on the web while retaining full copyright restrictions.

And, orthogonally to that:

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

When contacting copyright holders, the ideal thing is to give them all of these options and see what the best we can get is. However, use your judgment. It's, for instance, not always a good idea to send someone a really long e-mail with lots of complicated copyright questions in it. We'd much rather get granted just web-publishing rights on a single document than never get a reply at all.

Often people just say things like "do anything as long as it is non-commercial" -- that's great. 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:

Some people here may not actually have any of their works in any Mnstf publications, but have given us blanket permission just in case.
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).
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-K

Jennifer "Seven" Anderson: Grants us all rights for submitted works past and future.
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.
Wayne Barlowe: Gave us permission to use the art he provided (for Minicon 43) on the web.
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."
Bill Christ (Dec 2009): "Feel free to use anything I've written however you want to."
Karen Cooper (late 2008): Ok with web posting. No answer about CC licensing.
Kara Dalkey (Sept 2009): "I hereby grant Minn-Stf full rights to any work I have submitted for the Minicon Program Books."
Pamela Dean: see Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
David Dyer-Bennet, a.k.a. DDB (late 2008): Ok with web posting. Late 2009: Okay with CC-CY-SA for stuff my stuff in Minicon publications.
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.
Steve Fastner: see Fastner and Larson
Fastner and Larson: Gave us permission to use the art they provided (for Minicon 40) on the web.
Ken Fletcher (late 2008): Ok with web posting. Answer pending about CC licensing.
Deb Geisler (late 2008): Any Creative Commons license is ok, "no worries".
Alexis Gilliland (Dec 2009): Ok with web posting.
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".
Fred A Levy Haskell (a.k.a. Fred Haskell) (Dec 2009): Ok with web posting, ok with CC licensing.
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.
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."
Sharon Kahn (Dec 2009): "Do whatever you like".
Carol Kennedy (late 2008): Grants us all rights.
Greg Ketter (late 2008): Grants us all rights.
James Kuehl (late 2008): Ok with web posting. No answer about CC licensing.

L-Z

Rich Larson: see Fastner and Larson
Denny Lien (Oct 2009): "Absolutely" may put anything he wrote for Minicon Program Books, Progress Reports, or other official publications, up on the web.
Jason Malgren (late 2008): Grants us all rights.
Sue Mason (late 2008): For the Minicon 38 chapbook, Creative Commons is fine, as long as people aren't using her work for profit.
Kathy Marschall: see Kathy Grantham
Stephan Martinière: Gave us permission to use the art he provided (for Minicon 44) on the web.
Erin McKee (31 Oct 2009): Gave us permission to post program books with her art and release them under Creative Common licenses.
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"
John Picacio: Gave us permission to use the art he provided (for Minicon 41) on the web.
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.
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".
Laramie Sasseville (late 2008): Ok with web posting, ok with CC license. Would appreciate a link to dreamspell.net.
Jeff Schalles (Sept 2009): Free to republish under a permissive license that requires attribution and prohibits commercial use.
Matthew Strait: Grants us all rights for submitted works past and future.
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!"
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.
Geri Sullivan (late 2008): Ok with web posting, ok with CC license.
Richard Tatge (Dec 2009): (through Sharon), "do whatever you like".
David Thayer: see Teddy Harvia
Charles Vess: Gave us permission to use the art he provided (for Minicon 42) on the web.
Jim [James] Young (Nov 2009): Fine with web posting.

People who have given no answer

Usually they've given no answer because we haven't asked. This duplicates the information that goes with each program book below, but here it is sorted (by first name, because that was easier), cleaned up, and all together in one place.

Bold text indicates that this is someone who is either the only person who is needed, or one of only two people that are needed, to allow a full web posting of one or more program books, or someone who is needed to post the cover of a program book.

Alex Eisenstein (but only if there's a copyright statement in the Minicon 7 program book)
Alison Scott
Al Kuhfeld
Allan White
Andrew Bertke
Avram Grumer
Ben Bova
Ben Hansen
Beth Meacham
Brad Foster
Bruce Schneier
Caryl Dixon
Cathy Buburuz
Charles Urbach
Chaz Boston Baden
Chris Cuffaro
Christer Akerberg
Crystal Marvig - deceased
Dave Crawford
Dave Wixon
David Charles Cummer
David Clink
David Owen-Cruise
David Stever
Dean Dierschow
Denise Boie
Dex [that's all I've got]
Donna Bar
Elise Matthesen (formerly Elise Kruger)
Ellen Datlow
Emma Bull
EssJay / S. Jay
Frank Stodolka
Gail Catherine
George "Lan" Laskowski - deceased
Glenn Blacow
Glenn Tenhoff
Gordon Dickson - deceased
Graydon Saunders
Greg Johnson
Irene Raun
James Garrison
James Nicol
Jason Parker
Jay Gutzman
Jeanne Mealy
Jerry Stearns
J.J. Mars
Joel Rosenberg
John Bartelt
John Berkey - deceased
John M Ford - deceased
Jo Walton
Judie Cilcain
Kaja Foglio
Karen Johnson
Kate Worley - deceased
Kathy Routliffe
Katya Reimann
Ken MacLeod
Kip Williams
Kurt Vonn Gutzman
Larry Sanderson
Laura Jean (formerly Laura Jean Fish)
Laurel Winter
Lee Pelton - deceased
Lenny Bailes
Leslie Fish
Linda Lounsbury
Loren Botner
Margaret Organ-Kean
Marge B Simon
Mary Kay Kare
Matthew B Tepper
Maureen F. McHugh
M Christine Valada
Michael Amendolia
Michael Butler
Michael Matheny
Mike Gilbert
Mike Glicksohn
Nancy Nabile
Neil Rest
Peg Kerr
Peter Hentges
Phil Foglio
Phyllis Eisenstein
Polly Peterson
Rachael Lininger
Raymond H. Allard (Ray Allard)
Ray VanTilburg
Reed Waller - tried to e-mail -- bounced
Riawa [that's the whole name]
Richard Stuefer
Rich Larson
Rob Berry
Robert Charles Wilson
Rob Ihinger
Sally Morem
Steve Fooiland
Tappan King
Taral [that's the whole name]
Terri Windling
Terry A Garey
Thomas De Soto
Thomas Juntunen
Tim Boxell
Todd Cameron Hamilton
Tom Foster (but only if there's a copyright statement in the Minicon 7 program book)
Walter Jon Williams

Note that 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).

Web posting

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

Matt and Dorf can edit the Minicon 42-45 web sites as well as the document repository pages for Minicons 1-29.
Kevin and Laurel have super powers and can edit any Minnstf page, including the above and the Minicon 30-41 web sites.

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 page for all older Minicons, which links to:
  - Document repositories for each year, e.g. the Minicon 24 document repository

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 possible and reasonable that Minicon 29 (1994) might have had a website. 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 reserved

Note here what you intend to work on. This prevents duplication of effort.

Beth is working on the Minicon 26 program book.
Karen is working on the Minicon 32 program book.
We expect to get nice PDFs of the Minicon 34 and Minicon 35 program books from Jeff.

Work completed

Minicon program books

Overview

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

Know of a copy: self-explanatory
Scanned: self-explanatory
Processed: whether the scans have been beaten into forms suitable for web posting
Copyright ok: whether we have permission at least to republish on the web
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, such as burned to CD. These should eventually land in the archives or they don't count, but it can be "yes" even if they aren't there yet.

#	know of a copy	scanned	processed	copyright ok	posted	searchable	physically archived
1	see below	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
3	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
4	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
5	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
6	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Partial	Yes	Yes
7	partial (see below)	No	No	Partial	No	No	No
8	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
9	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
10	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
11	Yes	No	No	?	No	No	No
12	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Partial	No	No
13	Yes	No	No	?	No	No	No
15	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Partial	No	No
16	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Partial	No	No
17	Yes	No	No	?	No	No	No
14	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Partial	No	No
19	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
18	Yes	No	No	Partial	No	No	No
20	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Partial	No	No
21	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Partial	No	No
22	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Partial	No	No
23	Yes	No	No	?	No	No	No
24	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Partial	No	No
25	Yes	No	No	?	No	No	No
26	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	No	No
27	Yes	No	No	?	No	No	No
28	Yes	No	No	?	No	No	No
29	Yes	No	No	Partial	No	No	No
30	Yes	No	No	?	No	No	No
31	Yes	No	No	?	No	No	No
32	Yes	No	No	Partial	No	No	No
33	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	Yes
34	Yes	probably not necessary		Partial	No	No	No
35	Yes	probably not necessary		Partial	No	No	No
36	Yes	No	No	Partial	No	No	No
37	Yes	see note	see note	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
38	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	No	No	No
39	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	No	No	No
40	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
41	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	No	Yes	Yes
42	Yes	N/A		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
43	Yes	N/A		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
44	Yes	N/A		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

1-12

A flyer advertising Minicon 1 has been digitized, transcribed and posted on the web. This may be the closest thing to a program book, given that it was a 4.5 hour con. We don't know of any other documents associated with it, although it's possible there were others.
Minicon 2 was published between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice and is thus public domain.
Minicon 3 was published between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice and is thus public domain.
Minicon 4 was published between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice and is thus public domain.
Minicon 5 was published between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice and is thus public domain.
The text of Minicon 6 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 Minicon 7 program book is not in the archives and the archivist does not know where else to get a copy. However, the archives do have the original paste-up boards used to produce it. This is great, except (1) the years have not been kind to the glue and so it is rather discolored in places (2) I can't be sure that nothing has fallen off and been lost (3) it's missing page 9. Do you have a printed copy? (Or at least page 9?) If it has a copyright statement on the missing page, for pages 1-8, 10-12, we would need these copyright checks, but otherwise not:
- Tom Foster (art)
- Alex Eisenstein (art)
Minicon 8 was published between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice and is thus public domain.
Minicon 9 was published between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice and is thus public domain.
Minicon 10 was published between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice and is thus public domain.
The archivist does not currently have a copy of the Minicon 11 program book handy.
Minicon 12 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:
- Mike Gilbert
- EssJay (how the name appears in the artist credits) / S. Jay (how the name appears as a byline)
- Glenn Blacow
- Mike Glicksohn
- John Huotari (poem on page 3)

13, 15-17, 14, 19, 18, 20-23

The archivist does not currently have a copy of the Minicon 13 program book handy.
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:
- Linda Lounsbury
- Lee Pelton
- David Stever
The Minicon 16 program book has a copyright statement with the clause "Upon publication all rights rever to the author or artist" and needs these people to consent for a full web posting:
- RayAllard [who might have a space in his name, but that's not how it appears; is this Raymond H. Allard?]
- J.J. Mars (art)
- Lee Pelton (bio)
- Dave Wixon (bio)
- Frank Stodolka (bio)
The archivist does not currently have a copy of the Minicon 17 program book handy.
For the Minicon 14 program book and a copyright statement with "It's all yours, guys!", which we conservatively interpret as a reversion clause for text and art -- so we need permission from these people for a full posting:
- John Bartelt (bio)
- George "Lan" Laskowski (bio)
- Jerry Stearns (bio)
- David Stever ("So Then Welcome to Saint Paul" text)
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:
- Terry A. Garey
- Dean Dierschow
- Kate Worley
- Jerry Stearns
- Matthew B Tepper
- Terri Windling
- Caryl Dixon
- Dave Crawford
- Emma Bull
- Michael Butler
- David Cummer
- Karen Johnson
- Richard Stuefer
- Reed Waller
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. Need:
- Art on back cover by Rich Larson
The Minicon 22 program book, except for art by Erin McKee and Donna Bar, was published between 1978 and March 1989 has no copyright notices and was not registered with the copyright office and so is public domain. Need:
- Donna Bar
The archivist does not currently have a copy of the Minicon 23 program book handy.

24-33

The Minicon 24 has no copyright statement. Since it was published after 1 March 1989, copyright is automatic. We conservatively assume that artists and authors retain their copyright. We need consent from these people for a full web posting:
- Reed Waller
- Gail Catherine
- Polly Peterson
- Dex [that's all I've got]
- Jerry Stearns
- Sally Morem
- Peg Kerr
- Rob Ihinger
The archivist does not currently have a copy of the Minicon 25 program book handy.
The Minicon 26 program book is believed to be copyright-safe for web publishing.
The archivist does not currently have a copy of the Minicon 27 program book handy.
The archivist does not currently have a copy of the Minicon 28 program book handy.
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:
  - Phil Foglio
  - Kaja Foglio
  - Denise Boie
  - Cathy Buburuz
  - Brad Foster
  - Steve Fooiland
  - Jay Gutzman
  - Kurt Vonn Gutzman
  - James Garrison
  - Ben Hansen
  - Michael Matheny
  - Margaret Organ-Kean
  - Marge B Simon
  - Allan White
  - Taral [yup, that's the whole name]
- Photos:
  - M Christine Valada
The archivist does not currently have a copy of the Minicon 30 program book handy.
The archivist does not currently have a copy of the Minicon 31 program book handy.
The Minicon 32 program book needs these contributers to consent for a full web posting:
- Rob Berry
- Thomas Juntunen
- Loren Botner
- Phyllis Eisenstein
- Jerry Stearns
- Greg Johnson
- Kathy Routliffe
- Tappan King and/or Beth Meacham
- Jason Parker
The Minicon 33 program book (or souvenir book, really) is on the web. However, the 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. The affected pages have been scanned and processed, but have not yet made it to the web. It has a copyright statement with the clause "Illustrations remain the property of the respective artists"

34-36

The Minicon 34 program book is not readily available in digital form. It may be possible to retrieve the electronic copy originally used for printing. If not, we'll eventually scan it. It has a copyright statement with the clause "Illustrations remain the property of the respective artists" and so here's the list of people that would need to give their consent before a full web posting:
- Art:
  - Crystal Marvig
The Minicon 35 program book (or souvenir book really; there's no programming information) is not readily available in digital form. It may be possible to retrieve the electronic copy originally used for printing. If not, we'll eventually scan it. 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:
- Lenny Bailes (text)
- Maureen F. McHugh (text)
- Jerry Stearns (text)
- John Berkey (art)
- Charles Urbach (art)
- Glenn Tenhoff (art)
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:
- Judie Cilcain (art and text)
- Todd Cameron Hamilton
- Katya Reimann (art and text)
- Glenn Tenhoff
- Charles Urbach
- Kip Williams
- Ken MacLeod
- David Owen-Cruise
- Jo Walton
- Neil Rest
- Leslie Fish
- Irene Raun
- Avram Grumer
- Laurel Winter
- Graydon Saunders
- Alison Scott
- Bruce Schneier
- James Nicol
- Rachael Lininger
- Gordon Dickson [going to be tough]
- Phyllis Eisenstein
- Mary Kay Kare
- John M Ford [going to be tough]
- Ben Bova
- Joel Rosenberg
- Dave Wixon
- Peter Hentges

37-39

A PDF of the Minicon 37 program book is on the web, however, I have a very strong suspicion that it doesn't look quite the same in print. This is due to the various instances of very ugly fonts. There's also some surprising use of color on pages 10 (subtle) and 57 (obvious), but I bet it was printed in black and white. It has the copyright clause "Illustrations and articles remain the property of their respective artists and authors."
The Minicon 38 program book is digitized, but held up by copyright. Here is the list of people who would need to consent for a full web posting:
- Larry Sanderson (photo)
- Laura Jean Fish (photo)
- Andrew Bertke (photo)
- Glenn Tenhoff (art)
- Irene Raun (text)
- Robert Charles Wilson (text)
- David Clink (text)
- Nancy Nabile (text)
- Alison Scott (text)
- Elise Matthesen (text)
The Minicon 39 program book is digitized, but held up by copyright. Here is the list of people who would need to consent for a full web posting:
- Ellen Datlow (photo)
- Chaz Boston Baden (photo)
- Walter Jon Williams (photo)
- Ray VanTilburg (art)
- Riawa (art) [Yes, that's the whole name]

40-44

The Minicon 40 program book is digitized and could be posted.
The Minicon 41 program book is digitized, but held up by copyright. For a full posting we would need permission of:
- Christer Akerberg (photo)
- Chris Cuffaro (photo)
- Michael Amendolia (photo)
- Thomas De Soto (photo)
The Minicon 42 program book is on the web.
The Minicon 43 program book is on the web.
The Minicon 44 program book is on the web.

Minicon pocket programs

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.
No pocket programs from Minicons 34-37 are on the web
The Minicon 38 pocket program is digitized, but has art that needs a copyright query.
The Minicon 39 pocket program is digitized and ready to be posted on the web.
The Minicon 43 pocket program, minus Wayne Barlowe's art, is on the web.
The Minicon 44 pocket program is on the web.

Minicon progress reports

The Minicon 3 PR3 has been scanned and the scan has been burned to CD for the archives. It should also go on the web eventually.
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.
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. PR2 is in 9 separate PDFs; it would be nice to merge them.
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.
No Minicon 40 PRs are on the web.
No Minicon 41 PRs are on the web.
The Minicon 42 PR is not on the web.
The Minicon 43 PR1 is on the web, PR2 is not.
The Minicon 44 PR1 and PR2 (all of them) are on the web.

Bozo Bus Tribune (Minicon at-con newsletter)

All 4 issues of the Minicon 43 Bozo Bus Tribune are on the web
All 4 issues of the Minicon 44 Medallion Hunt Bulletin (with Bozo Bug Tribune) are on the web

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 scanned and 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

None so far. But Matt is holding Runes 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, part of 17, 19, 24, 57, 73, 75 ("Stroon") and also the associated "Strewn", and 86. #7 was the first to be called "Rune". Before that, it was the "Minnesota Science Fiction Society Newsletter".