Another “Eloi” moment?

Whenever I learn of a situation where another library closes or a cache of baseball material is thrown away due to lack of space, money, or interest, I refer to this scene from the 1960 film version of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine.

That’s how I felt after reading Jeff Pearlman’s piece in The Guardian, “The heartbreaking farewell: the world’s greatest sports library checks out,” about changes at the iconic Sports Illustrated that seem to necessitate the casting off of so much historical data. There seems to be some question about exactly what will happen to the stuff: will SI move all this somewhere else? Will it be turned into confetti? Will some enterprising data-philes hang out near the SI office and scoop up big plastic garbage bags full of unrealized treasure?

A particular “Eloi moment” from Perlman’s article:

[A] few weeks ago a young sports fan asked me if Sports Illustrated still exists in print. My verbal reply, “Of course.” My mental reply, “F******ck.” (My edit; Perlman went full “u.”)

But I can’t be too disheartened; at least the kid knew that SI was a thing. Young folk just get their information in different ways these days. As long as they’re reading something.

Several years ago, the publication created SI Vault, ostensibly a digital replication of every issue. I particularly enjoyed the advertisements that served as a sort of time capsule of styles and tastes through the years. (Somewhere I have the first pages of a project I had planned about the passage of time as revealed through those ads.) What a joy that was. But somewhere along the way it abandoned that presentation and offered only the text, without of the “Illustrated” part that put SI on the map in its toddlerhood. How much work could that have been? It’s a simple scan turned into an Issuu situation. The current SI Vault interface makes it unwieldy and not a whole lot of fun.