Stuffed in a corner of the cozy library is a shelf filled with tattered sheets of papers, pulled out of context from the original books and collections that they were published in. These artifacts are testaments to an ancient age, musings by authors who lived through and experienced those simpler times and contributed to the burgeoning growth and knowledge at the time in their own small way.

Put another way, this is a collection of Readme.txt and similar files from authors who distributed these files as part of another program, usually in a .zip file or CD of some kind, though it varies. I’ve been interested in bringing these forward from the hidden depths of the Internet and displaying them to the world because they’re often interesting artifacts to look at and see what online life was like in the past and what things people thought were important and what they were worried about back during the time period where they made these files. Most of them are probably otherwise unsearchable as they’re hidden away within other files that may only be linked on one or two sites on the entire Internet now, if that, and otherwise doomed to eventually be swept away by the waves of time. This site is part of an effort to bring them forth into the light again, and make them viewable and searchable.

I’ve tried to include some information like the date of the file or the program/zip file the file was from when possible, but it’s an experimental page and we’ll see what the page ends up looking like in the end. I’ll probably try to upload most of them to the Internet Archive eventually but it’s been unreliable lately up in Canada, and I believe that it doesn’t do .txt files well, so we’ll see.

These are the different shelves in my personal library (and they all go off to different webpages):

ට  Shelf 1: My Diary Entries — for my life/travel blog posts.
ට  Shelf 2: Winter Night Library — for scans of books, booklets, newspapers, magazines, etc.
ට  Shelf 3: Life Through A Mailbox — for scans of things put in my physical mailbox, largely ads, brochures, newsletters, etc.
ට  Shelf 4: The Memo Bank — for short-form writing, primarily scraps of papers, notes, memos, school worksheets, etc.
ට  Shelf 5: Jumbled Letters — for long-form writing and digital documents, essays, fiction, chat logs, etc.
ට  Shelf 6: Eclectic Ephemera — for miscellaneous scans that aren’t in any other category.
ට  Shelf 7: Shelves of Odd Curios — for set collections of photos and scans centered around a certain theme.
ට  Shelf 8: Ancient Texts — for a collection of Readme.txt and similar files from old archives and collections. (You are here)
ට  Shelf 9: My Dream Diary — for my personal dream diary entries.