The AAUGH Blog just donated some items from the AAUGH.com Reference Library to the Schulz Museum and Research center. It was always are hope that certain things end up there, but we planned to donate them later in life, or perhaps just leave them in a will, if I ever happen to die (perish the thought!) But then there were some major fires nearby, and this got me thinking about how some of the unique items could be snuffed out here in a spark. True, there have also been major fires in the past near the Schulz Museum, but they at least have better-protected storage facilities.
So what did I donate? Well, there were a couple pieces of original art — not Schulz art, mind you, but the original art to a Peanuts parody comic (a one-page gag from 
To Be Announced), and the original for the April 25, 1992 installment of the comic strip Mr. Abernathy, in which the title character’s pet elephant tries to lay down on the roof of the house in order to “out-Snoopy Snoopy”.
The rest of the donation was publications of various sorts. Two of them were just library-bound editions that I knew that they had a specific upcoming use for. That copy of Peanuts may look like a normal non-first-printing edition, but it’s actually a very specific copy: it’s the one that the publisher marked up when figuring out what needed to be changed for the next printing, and so it shows how that process is done. And the remaining item is a very scarce publication that they would likely not have otherwise, an obscene reworking of Schulz material by some respectable independent artists. I feel quite confident that that will never go on display in the museum (at very least not in a way that anyone can look inside), but it’s there if someone is doing research on reaction to and reinterpretation of Schulz’s work.
I’ve also had discussions with folks at the museum about what further items they may want from my collection, so I can have material prepared to give them in the future (in my will, if I don’t choose to give it earlier.) There are a few things they want which I’m not choosing to part with yet… but it’s less than 2% of my collection. The museum is not looking for every single possible item. I heard one person recently express surprise that the museum wasn’t interested in an item they had offered — but it was a copy of a fairly common magazine that Schulz had autographed. That’s a great item… for a collector. But the museum almost certainly already has that magazine, and a signed copy doesn’t really help them tell the story of the man any better. That’s really the goal. What kinds of things might they want?
- Original Schulz art
- Correspondence with Schulz
- Relevant business documents
- Unique items from the production of Peanuts items
- Schulz media that they do not already have. (I don’t mean “a specific reprint book they don’t have”, but, say, “a recording of the August 29th, 1952 episode of the University of Minnesota’s KUOM radio show Book Chats on which Schulz was discussing the firsts Peanuts book.” That’d be cool for them to have.)
And whatever you may have, contact the museum and find out if they want it before sending it or leaving it to them in your will.
