YesA59

Noland has amassed an incredible amount of Corvette information over the last 40 years. As many of you know, Noland had unique access to GM records and photographs. He also had a great number of people sending him information and pictures regarding their cars. From what I can tell, Noland saved just about every piece of paper he touched regarding Corvettes.

Two years ago I approached Noland about building a website based on his collection of Corvette related materials. Noland readily agreed, as he has dedicated his entire adult life to learning about Corvettes and then sharing that information with others. Noland requested only one thing in return – he simply asked me to encourage people to join the NCRS and the Solid Axle Corvette Club.

Scanning everything in Noland’s collection would be impossible, but I did scan everything that seemed worthwhile to owners of 1953 thru 1967 Corvettes. Over 20 months I scanned roughly 20,000 photos, 5000 documents (about 30,000 pages), 3500 letters and surveys containing VIN related identifying information, and 3500 GM diagrams (most of which were 24in x 36in).

The collection is simply breathtaking when examined in its entirety. And almost all of the material is free of copyright protection.

The more I scanned, the more I realized that Noland had invested a great deal of time, effort and money in building his collection. I personally do not believe that Noland's financial rewards have been commensurate with his investment. And I started to realize that time constraints would prevent me from publishing his entire collection on the web in the near future.

So I approached Noland about the idea of selling digital copies of his collection (with confidential information redacted of course). This would allow many more people to access and study Noland's collection. This would also allow the Corvette hobby to thank Noland for his efforts at a time when Noland is well into retirement. Noland liked the idea of selling digital copies, and encouraged me to pursue the idea. My deal with Noland is pretty simple – he gets all the proceeds. Please take a look at the website for more information on this topic if you are interested.

The first iteration of the Noland’s website is at www.earlycorvettes.net

The website is pretty basic at this point, but after working on this project for two years I wanted to get the ball rolling.

Just to give you a taste....









Thanks,

Russ Uzes

1snake

Awesome collection. I'll contact you about getting the "Airbox/L88 Model". Definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Jim

Kerrmudgeon

Love that split 63, holding what looks like 4 adults in comfort, what a concept.
What is the approximate launch date for the digital library? And what would the selling price be around? Thanks for all your and Mr. Adams work.

JohnZ

Outstanding, Russ! You have mail...

Vettrocious

The digital library sounds great. That's an awful lot of work.

In reviewing the attachments, I'm pretty sure that 63 split illustration must be the little-known experimental FWD Vette, with no rear suspension and a floor two inches above the road.

Having been in the back of a split (when I was young and flexible, for adventures best not discussed here) that bald spot on the rear seat passenger's head can only be from contact with the glass. I heard that they never were able to get those two people out. .

waynec

Not as good as his books, where everything is put into context, but an amazing trove of information for those with the patience to ferret out the stuff they seek. Weeks of entertainment for Corvette buffs.

I worked briefly at Chevy's engineering center back in the day, and recognize a few of the names on engineering drawings. Wish it were a bit more affordable, as I'll have to think hard about whether I can afford that trip into nostalgia, but I understand the pricing as obviously there's too much there to be able to fit on a few DVDs.

Bravo to Russ and Noland (and GM) for making this collection available!!!

YesA59

I appreciate all of the nice comments. Noland deserves all the thanks, however. I had a blast looking at his stuff. He has boxes and boxes and boxes of Corvette items, most of which is unorganized. Imagine looking at the history of the Corvette one page at a time, and never knowing what the next page would reveal. Sometimes I didn't even realize what I was looking at until after I had scanned in the item and reviewed the scan much later. For example, take a look at the pic from the 1953 Motorama below. Noland had a couple of GM 35mm negative strips from the 53 Motorama - mostly crowd shots. No big deal when I scanned them in. 6 months later - Holy Cow!

I am estimating the shipping date at August 1. I finished the scanning, but I still need to redact confidential information from about 5000 documents among other things. Takes me about a minute to redact a file, so the time adds up fast given how much stuff Noland has. And I also have day job....

I thought about delaying the website and announcement until I was much closer to being able to ship. Noland and I ultimately decided to announce today, however, just so we can let as many people know about the collection as possible by August 1. For various reasons, the offer to sale the collection is a one shot deal. Filling orders on an on-going basis is not viable for me. So we are going to take orders this summer, ship the orders around Aug 1, and then we are done.

For more info about buying the Digital Collection:
http://www.earlycorvettes.net/WhyBuy.html


Russ

YesA59

I appreciate your comments on the pricing. We tried to pick price points that would make the collection affordable for most people. I am still looking for ways to avoid the expense of a hard drive for the base model. I won't know the final gigabyte count until I am finished redacting and organizing all of the files. At that point, I will take a final look at cheaper storage media options (DVDs. USB stick drives, etc).

I scanned at very high resolution - the master version of the collection consumes about 750GB of my hard drive.

Russ

stratplus

Russ thank you for sharing. Great material...

Godholio

I'll most likely buy into this. I love seeing the old photos and scans.

DVDs or hard drives are probably the most cost-effective portable media, but obviously it depends on how much data it ends up being.

Vogie

If you can get a contact in China, there are many sources of affordable storage devices (50% or less than US retail). Might help offset the price of the library. I'm not sure that the effort to purchase and import them is like. The second option I could think of is a "subscription" with which a partial copy is sent on a regular basis which would spread your workload. I truly appreciate your work and Noland's willingness to share. You both deserve compensation for all of this. Thank you.

YesA59

Thanks for the nice comments Vogie.

I priced the USB Drives a few months ago, and the $37 per drive reflected a bulk discount. I couldn't find anything cheaper.

The final shipping version will probably have about 35,000 files. I don't know the final shipping size in bytes, but I suspect the base version will have 20GB or more, while the deluxe version may be about 60GB. The master copy takes up 750GB on my hard drive.

Thus, even for the base version, recordable CDs and DVDs won't work. I need a single media that I can use to transfer files onto automatically while I do my day job. Splitting files between multiple CDs or DVDs is just too labor intensive for me right now. The only way for me to complete the project in a timely manner is to use a single storage media.

I am looking for cheaper alternatives, however, like a USB thumb drive. Basically, I will go with the cheapest most efficient option when the time comes to price and ship.

Russ

joshtried

as a side note on how to sell, you may not be familiar with setting up networks, and remote access and such, but you could peer to peer the information. then people could use whatever hard drive/storage device they have at home.. im definitely not the guy to ask about those kinds of things, but ive seen IT guys set up something similar in about 15 minutes..

YesA59

I received a very good question by email regarding the organization of the collection - and what it will look like on the USB drive that ships. Here is my best guess as of today:

The organizational structure will be a copy of the directory. There will be separate folders for the 4 major categories (Photos, GM Diagrams, VIN #, and Reference Materials). The Photos will be organized largely by group of years with separate folders (53 to 55, 56 to 57, 58 thru 60, 61 and 62, and 63 thru 67) to the best of my ability. Keep in mind that I need to make split second decisions on each file I touch - otherwise I would devote a lifetime to organizing the massive amount of stuff Noland accumulated. The organization of the GM Diagrams is in a state of flux. I have organized about 700 of the 3500 so far, by GM Diagram # with key words built in (year, part type, etc). This makes it extremely easy to search the Diagrams on a computer. This approach also takes 2 to 3 minutes per Diagram, so you see the problem. I am not committing to a fully indexed approach to the GM Diagrams. I might give it a shot, but the time commitment is huge. The VIN # files will be in separate folders for each year. The year and the last 5 digits of the VIN # will be in the file name. Searching for a VIN # for a particular car takes a second or two on my computer. That's a super cool feature. Putting the VIN # in the file name is all part of the redaction process, so that will almost certainly be the way the VIN # system works. The Reference Materials will be largely PDF files. I don't have an efficient way to organize this material. The neat stuff will have a descriptive name. The common stuff will probably have an unhelpful name reflecting a bunch of digits.

YesA59

Interesting thought, but I don't think it will work. A year ago I downloaded 100GB of data (don't ask), and Comcast nearly terminated my service. Thus, there could be issues on the receiving end.

And I would have to park the data on a server. From the server end, I would be looking at multiple terrabyte transfers over a short period of time. I don't think that will fly either. I use multiple web servers, and I am pretty sure that I have volume restrictions far less than a TB per month.

I might dig into this a bit deeper, however.

Thanks for the interesting idea,

Russ

nitromainia

Russ, The stuff is incredible! I'm sure your efforts will be rewarded...

I'm volunteering to zip up to Lake Tahoe in your '53 With my boards on your ski rack -just so you can add to the Ski car pics!!

Not nearly as cool, but I took my 68 427 400 Automatic Convertible on an epic Ski trip- Top Down- Boards stickin' up (no time ta make a rack) Three hour ride... Anyway, Fantastic stuff and your cars are beyond compare!!

Hats off to you and Noland !!

Vette60

Wow. Sounds like an incredible collection of info...

Thank you for your efforts.

R.

shooter1951

Russ,
You must be feeling like a kid turned loose in the Hershey's plant!! What a GREAT collection. Noland definitely deserves to be compensated for sharing the information he has accumulated about the Corvette. Thank both you and Noland for the time and effort you have/are putting into this so all of us can enjoy it.
Take care,
Shooter

Dr L-88

Russ,

PM sent. This is fantastic!! Almost too good to be true! Thanks to you for your efforts, and especially to Noland for his years of dedication to our hobby.

Rex