It may come as a surprise, but paper and photographs have a short life. Yes - short not moderate - short. Even with the best of efforts, much of our automotive history will decay to unreadability in the next 50 years.

We can slow the slide, but protecting these materials from that requires expensive storage, protective encasement, and worse – restricted access.

This is not an inexpensive process - most libraries, archives and museums can no longer carry the rising cost of storage and the personnel costs associated with manual retrieval of these significant materials.

This impending loss does not even take into account the lack of professional management of the materials. Papers, photographs, artwork and printed documents have been disappearing by theft, "gifting" to private collectors, or carelessly thrown away, even disposed without regard to their significance. This does not take into account access being denied due to archaic and ridiculous "legal" rulings.