Chicago Billiard Museum?

Sad to hear he passed, he and I talked several times . Once he called and asked about 2 books he had heard of ,and wanted to know if I knew if they actually existed, I told him yes , they do exist , I don't own them but I have seen both of them personally , he seemed extremely happy that they were not unicorns . The books were on the subject of the records of historic balkline billiards matches I believe, Bob if you know the names of the books , I just can't remember any more and would appreciate if you could give the titles. The latter was an update of the final years of the game by Clem Trainer
I have come back a year later and I believe the first book was by Thomas Gallagher , a top amateur player whom I believe was also a reporter and played in quite a few of the tournaments, beating some of the days best players .

Hi,
Is the museum open?
What about Vienna? https://museen.de/billardmuseum-weingartner-wien.html

kling&allen said:

With the loss of both David Bond and Charlie Ursitti, the only online versions of Billiards Magazine were also lost. I know there are private collections of these artifacts, but someone would have the reproduce the effort and cost of scanning them again.

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I am not too worried about the magazines , there were thousands and thousands of them printed and somewhere I am sure there are digital copies. I worry about some of the items they had that there are only a couple of handfuls of in existence. I know of a collection of the rare books, that may be the most extensive in the world . I am sure there are some in there that are one of 5 or less. I wonder if there is any grant money that could be had to create a museum collection at the Smithsonian or ?

Bob Jewett said:

I only now noticed this thread. I haven't seen the original 34-page booklet by Gallagher. Both versions are in the amazing billiard bibliography by Dieter Haase. I have extra copies of the updated booklet by Clement Trainer in case anyone is interested. My collection copy was inscribed by Trainer to John Grissim.

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Thanks Bob, I have also seen the Gallagher book , very hard to find

Bob Jewett said:

The Chicago Billiard Museum never had a physical location or a building you could visit. The person who created it -- David Bond who used to post here -- died in a tragic accident. The items that he had borrowed/collected have gone back to their owners or been sold.

Heinrich Weingartner's museum does not have standard opening hours. It is possible to arrange a visit by contacting them. Contact information is available on their website:

Billard Weingartner | Spiele und Billard | Reparaturen

www.billard-weingartner.at

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THANK you very much for all information.
Is any other billiard museum around the world or used to be?

A physical place is great but not necessary or cost efficient in todays world. How many people can even afford a trip to Europe. An online museum, where every piece is at first shown, and as time goes by , exhibited in it's entirety. page by page, piece by piece. You could even make it possible to print copies to sell, to help offset some of the cost. I understand it is a daunting task , I spent several years taking pictures on my days off and garnering all the information I could about the players of the past . I intended to one day make it available but I became too sick to continue. This was in the late 1980s early 1990s so I hadn't really focused on the internet ideas as much. Scanners were a brand new technology and they did not work well on the old books , Having spent my working life in the printing industry , I have had an easy solution, that would solve 80 to 90 % of that for 30 years, but no one I have spoken to was interested ,
I am not interested in trying to make money from any of the billiard stuff, I just don't have the time or energy, that will be for someone much younger. But , I would help in any way I could with a group truly motivated to make a not for profit, site that cost a minimum amount for visitors to be able to enjoy and study all the wonderful things this game has produced .
If anyone else is interested in something like this, and willing to try to make it happen, even if slowly at first. The physical items would not necessarily even need to leave our possession. 30 years ago I went to Dayton and copied Joe Burns collection of pictures from the Dayton tournaments in the 1970s, there was also a young man { at the time, I need to ask him if he cares if I give his name} who was taking photographs for many years at the tournaments who also had a huge collection. There were many pictures of all the greats when they were very young ,so without this man , most of that would have never existed. I did show the pictures to Dennis Glenn in the late 90s early 2000s and he thought the oriental lady from California had taken them , so there may be some similar ones out there she took, I can't remember her name, Bob probably knows her, Sunny maybe ? I know Bill Porter and his friend made all their photos available and I have to believe that there were others who did something similar in their areas. It would be great to get all of it together before it ends up in a landfill.

Lukasz said:

THANK you very much for all information.
Is any other billiard museum around the world or used to be?

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Thurston's in the UK (Liverpool) have a billiard heritage museum. Their web site says you can contact them for access. (To my shame, I haven't done so yet!)

Regarding saving the old and rare books, I may be biased, but I think print on demand reproductions (or at least online scans) are a good way of both preserving the information and making it available to people. Of course, it doesn't solve the problem of protecting the physical books. The few rare and very old books I've acquired feel like a heavy responsibility. The prospect of damp problems, our dogs, my wife leaving random windows open in rain storms...

I did my first document photography recently (in lieu of a scanner!) The theory is you use a piece of anti-glare perspex (matt one side to avoid creating a reflection) to hold the page flat while you photograph it, but the perspex I bought distorted the image slightly, which makes OCR and reproducing pictures difficult.

I suppose all forms of storage have their flaws and risks, but perhaps an independent archive like the Internet Archive or Hathi Trust would be a 'safe' repository.

kling&allen said:

Ideally we could get some of this content to Mike for hosting (https://www.azbilliards.com/goldmine/) instead of relying on web archives that might come and go.

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Honestly, I think the well-funded web archives are more stable than AZB, in the very long term. If they were to come down, you'd hope at least that their content would be passed on to someone else.

I was thinking it through. A personal google docs account still has the risk of being shut down, especially if we're looking ahead to after a person has died and/or the content has been unused for several years. I've heard of someone's Amazon Print-on-demand account becoming inaccessible after a death (and Amazon wouldn't facilitate access - although I think they're still selling the books for now!), so that's not a great long-term solution either.

A blockchain shared archive could be good. I don't know whether suitable ones exist yet.

Probably all this has been thought about before by people with different niches.

Bob Jewett said:

I think you will be better off asking your question in the main forum. But I remember hearing of the room and I have a very vague memory of the room owner being Frank vanden Bosch, but that is very murky.

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Thank you I will move the message to the main forum. I am sure you will not remember me but I played you straight pool when the various Student Unions and someone in college system had us playing straight pool. I couldn't play at all at the time and you beat me easily.

I think a asian guy going to school here form Canada won that year or the year after.

No, Dan would visit Brian Hashimoto whenever he was in Los Angeles. The Asian guy from Canada was bigger and heavier than Dan I think he was playing for college in Fullerton and yes it was the ACUI.