History

Our Foundation got its start as an idea in 01984 when one of the founders had just finished reading the "Foundation Trilogy" by Dr. Isaac Asimov. While in high school, his immediate thought was that such a Foundation as in the series would be good for any civilization to have. Other books read that aided in this dream were "Lest Darkness Fall" by L. Sprague DeCamp, "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter Miller Jr. and "There will be Time" by Poul Anderson.

Later, that would develop into a dream of how average folks could start a project that would preserve the accumulated knowledge of mankind, securing it against any possible disaster. Long years of preparation and thought were needed, to understand what all would be required, and the best ways of going about it. Many areas of knowledge had to be studied, including how a variety of faiths and organizations had lasted and the variety of schools of thoughts on disaster preparedness in general.

The dream became much closer to reality in the year 02007, when The Encyclopedia Foundation was in it's first incorporation, and was able to purchase a small condemned house at 700 E. Stanford Avenue in Springfield, Illinois. An enormous amount of time, money and effort, provided by the Directors themselves, was needed to get the house back in code. A new roof, a completely new electrical and plumbing system, furnace, water heater, all new windows - these were just some of the big items needed.

Since then, we have re-incorporated under the laws of the State of Illinois as currently all of our directors live there. And our facility is no longer condemned but is a fully functioning place for all our needs. Everything here is new, and purchased purely for the Foundation. We have also just purchased the house next door, and will be fixing that up, too. We are proud of what we have created so far, and prouder that our Foundation is completely debt free, and owns the facilities outright.

Three people currently make up the board, from various walks of life. The Foundation pays no salaries, wages or bonuses to it's Directors, nor does it maintain a paid staff. Everything is through donations from the Directors themselves - their time, money and labor.

The point of using the Roman Numeral for 10,000 as a symbol is to reflect our goal of preserving such books and knowledge for at least 10,000 years. It also reflects our support of other organizations that think in the long range. Likewise we use the method of refering to years as with five digits instead of four. Thus it is 02011 when this website was created.