This is the way it was

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We're not alone in this, but we have a room called "The Library". In theory, this is where we put the books we share with each other, as well as the boxes of software we're using. Remember when software came in a box with a manual? A community resource, so we don't need six copies of the O'Reilly Perl book. That kind of thing.

However, that's the theory...
TheWayItWas.png

That's not how it worked out. This picture? I took that today. This is an accurate sample of the kinds of things that are on the shelves of our Library. If this room were teleported back in time to February 2000, it would still be a mix of cutting edge and irrelevant.

A selection of some of the interesting portions of this collection:

  • Inside MS-DOS 6
  • Windows 3.1 Secrets
  • Windows 95 Resource Kit
  • Windows NT4 Resource Kit
  • Windows Server 2000 Deployment Planning
  • BSD OS 4.2
  • ATM Theory And Application
  • O'Reilly Perl Resource Kit, 1997 version
  • A complete Novell manual kit from 2000 (NetWare 4.2 and 5.0, GroupWise, Zen, ManageWise, and other greatest hits)
One of us has been putting newer stuff in there, since there are manuals for Solaris 9 on the shelves. But the vast majority is pretty darned old. The rest are probably cluttering up the shelves we all have in our offices. Mine only go back seven years, since that's as far as I go back at this job, but I'm still the new kid on this block.
 

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we have a similar shelf here, same book in fact, though I think my "Troubleshooting eDir" book from Novell will be around for the foreseeable future

We've had that shelf every single place I've worked. In some ways, it serves as an interesting historical piece, almost the way geologists talk about layers of dirt as strata, telling them a story about what's happened in the past.

These days, I've been trying hard to eliminate this, keeping only what we actually currently use. So far, despite the fears of various people, it's working. And the office feels much less cave-like, thereby.