Something really similar happened to me when I searched for something weird enough that I didn't get matches. Everything linked to a site that was really similar to that petrofilm site. Maybe that site has something close to what you're looking for, and the results are based on other stuff also on that site?
I don't remember what I was searching for that time or what site I was getting results from, but I am pretty sure I asked about it here somewhere. Maybe I will go look around later and see if I can find it.
When I was a teen, one of my mother's friends moved into a smaller place, and asked to store some things in our garage until they could work out what to do with it. I'm pretty sure the stuff was finally gotten rid of after about two decades. I don't know what happened to it, but as my mother had lost all contact with this person after about 2-3 years of volunteering the space, I don't think she got it back.
By the time I hit adulthood, I wanted to clear up this garage, so it could actually be used, I wondered about the legality of just dumping that stuff.
When I was a teen, one of my mother's friends moved into a smaller place, and asked to store some things in our garage until they could work out what to do with it. I'm pretty sure the stuff was finally gotten rid of after about two decades. I don't know what happened to it, but as my mother had lost all contact with this person after about 2-3 years of volunteering the space, I don't think she got it back.
By the time I hit adulthood, I wanted to clear up this garage, so it could actually be used, I wondered about the legality of just dumping that stuff.
There are laws that govern what to do about abandoned property. In most cases, if you wanted to absolve yourself of any potential lawsuit/damages you would need to have shown due diligence in contacting the owners of the property and, failing that, running an advert for a month or three in the local paper notifying the owners that they should come get their property before it is disposed of. Public Notices, mostly filled nowadays with ads run by storage rental places after people stop paying their rent. If you can show you tried to contact them (i.e. returned registered letters or receipts from letters that went unanswered) and ran an ad and they still didn't get their shit out of the garage, you can show due diligence if they ever tried to sue you later. Maybe the parents should have sent some registered letters to their son before throwing out his porno mags...
We ran into a similar problem you are describing at the local historical society/museum I volunteer for. Founded in 1945, the society has been given all sorts of "stuff" over the years with no deed of gift accompanying the donations, and only very vague records or no records to determine who gave us, say, the six useless sets of encyclopedias published from 1910-1925 now taking up valuable shelf space in our storage area. Before we can legally dispose of any of it, we have to list items identified as "found in collection" that have no paperwork with the State Treasurers Office for the better part of a year. If no one responds to that notice, the treasurer's office grants us legal custody of the items and then we can do whatever we want with the worthless junk valuable historical artifacts. At last count I had put together 6 pages of books "found in collection" that we needed to get clearance from the treasurer so we can put them on Ebay, sell them in a yard sale, or drop them off in the recycling at the transfer station as the case may be.
At the moment though, Covid interrupted our ability to submit lists. And now that I am no longer the Archivist there (I stepped down to take on the equally unpaid position of the society's Historian), it's some one else's problem now.
The crap people drop off too... fill out a deed of gift form? So the collections committee can decide whether to accession your junk?
Ain't nobody got time for that!
JUST GO TO THE DAMN DUMP WILLYA? JUST BECAUSE IT WAS YOUR GRANDMOTHERS WE DON'T WANT YOUR LEFTOVER YARD SALE SHIT
I figured my mother didn't follow the letter of the law, but by the time it was finally removed, any legal risk was low. It's unlikely that the person who left it had any desire to get it back.
This person was always on the edge, financially and emotionally. I think they never found a place for the things, and probably found the idea of coming back to claim the stuff too difficult. I imagine it the stress over the idea of coming back to claim it got even higher as they became more estranged from my mother.
Plus, the items might have survived a year or two in the garage, but by the time this person dropped out of our lives, the lack of climate control, dust, and animal infestation ruined a lot of it. This was only supposed to be a temporary measure, and my mom didn't make any guarantees.
I doubt your mom would have gotten into much trouble over this, s_r. The burden of due diligence for tracking down someone who essentially took advantage of a private space to store stuff free-of-charge for years? decades? does not carry the same expectation of stewardship and care for property donated to a non-profit billing itself as a museum or archive.
And the reason why states have had to put laws in place regarding how to properly dispose of items donated to cultural institutions is due in part to past practices of no legal paperwork being filed between the donor and the institution (the place where I was the volunteer archivist didn't even have a collection policy, an accession committee or deed of gift forms when I first joined). Also, because of some really boneheaded moves by high-profile intuitions (*cough* art museums) in the recent past auctioning off donations acquired back in the days of a handshake, without bothering to inform the donors or their descendants. But the new work-around is to refuse almost all donations unless they come unrestricted, so an institution can if they want to, have a yard sale with your stuff -- or even take it to the landfill -- without ever having to tell you or get your permission.
A giant sinkhole has opened up in the car park of a hospital in Naples, Italy, forcing the temporary closure of a nearby residence for recovering Covid-19 patients because the electricity was cut.
Operations at the Hospital of the Sea were not affected, and firefighters said no one appeared to be injured. The sinkhole consumed a few cars in the hospital’s otherwise empty visitors’ car park on Friday.
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