After a surprise unveiling in August 2014, Board of Trustees Chair Len Shustek poses with early design concepts of the Shustek Center.
unprocessed archival collections were inaccessibly stored in Milpitas and, in its existing configuration, the facility was reaching its maximum capacity. Clearly, it was time to acquire a third building. Immediately following the board’s approval in 2014 to purchase another property, Trustee Donna Dubinsky
hatched a secret plan to name the building for her husband and Museum board chair Len Shustek in honor of his leadership of the Museum for more than 20 years. Naturally, Donna’s idea was well received and she personally began fundraising. In a few short months, Donna had raised the majority of the capital needed.
In August, a small group of donors and staff gathered with Donna and President and ceo John Hollar to unveil a mock-up of the Shustek Center, complete with dedicated parking for Len’s beloved Tesla. To everyone’s delight, the covert plan was still a secret. Len was visibly surprised and delighted by the honor. By November, Vice President of Operations Gary Matsushita identified a possible East Bay property. Several Collections staff and trustees toured the freshly painted office building. At 50,000 square feet, it was larger than originally planned but satisfied several requirements: staff offices, a research room, and a loading dock for receiving new acquisitions, plus large open areas where several exciting archives processing projects could be achieved simultaneously. Considering future growth of the archives and staff, the board’s Finance Committee with ceo John Hollar and cfo George Holmes confirmed the purchase was a sound investment. In February 2015, the Museum officially purchased the property at 48431 Milm-
ont Drive in Fremont. Over the course of several months the building then underwent systems upgrades and was outfitted with new office furniture, lighting, and shelving. In December, it was finally ready for collections and staff to move in! Registrars, archivists, and professional movers packed boxes of archives and cartfuls of artifacts from Mountain View and shifted pallets of boxed documents and software from Milpitas. By April 2016, several staff had relocated to new offices. New acquisitions receiving and cataloging operations also relocated to the Shustek Center, so several volunteers settled in to assist. For the first time since the Museum was established on the West Coast, defined workspaces for collections processing properly equipped with large tables for sorting and packing plus a modern, dedicated scanning lab were finally established at the Shustek Center. One of those defined spaces is the Bernard L. Peuto Software Preservation Lab. The Software Preservation Lab is a dedicated laboratory where C O M P U T E R H I S TO R Y M U S E U M
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