I have mentioned Jason Scott several times on this blog. He’s the guy who runs textfiles.com, blogs at ASCII, and came up with the Archive Team to save orphaned/closing websites (like, say, Geocities). He’s an outspoken pain in the ass and I admire him immensely. ALA or ACRL or SLA or somebody needs to get him to come talk to librarians about archiving in the 21st century. I am sure he would be funny and scandalous, piss off most of the audience, and people would talk about it for years to come.

Anyway.

The guy lost his job recently, which prompted his newest scheme: The Jason Scott Sabbatical. The idea is that if he can raise $25,000 in donations, he can devote himself to his myriad projects in computer history. People like you and me pledge money. If he hits $25K in pledges by 22 November 2009, the pledges will automatically be paid out of pledger’s Amazon accounts, Jason gets a pile of money, pledgers get various premiums based on how much we pledged, and Jason keeps us updated on how he’s spending his time and our money. If he fails to meet the goal, nothing happens.

I pledged $25, the minimum suggested pledge (though you could pledge as little as $5.00). I want to see this succeed for him. I’m also very intrigued at how Kickstarter works. It could have been a good way to do the Louisville Free Public Library fundraiser. It could be a way to do a project like the LSW Zine (more on that very soon) and ensure it gets entirely funded before making a single photocopy. It could be a way for a library to run a fundraiser for a specific project. It looks elegant and fun.

I doubt many of you will want to pledge to the Jason Scott Sabbatical if you aren’t familiar with him, but if you are, then please consider pledging. And if you aren’t familiar with him, why not?

Also, if you have any experience with Kickstarter or have other interesting Kickstarter projects you’d like to point me to, please leave a comment.