Words by Jason Scott of the Internet Archive (2011-06-06):

-- Usenet Archive of UTZOO Tapes --

This is a collection of .TGZ files of very early USENET posted data provided by 
a number of driven and brave individuals, including David Wiseman, Henry Spencer, 
Lance Bailey, Bruce Jones, Bob Webber, Brewster Kahle, and Sue Thielen.

This mirror is, unfortunately, incomplete, and the README file below reflects 
files and aspects that are not currently available generally. We welcome contri-
butions of those missing files. A huge thanks to Rich Skrenta for keeping this 
data safe for years.

From the original FTP site:

230-Yes, you have found the on-line copy of Henry Spencer's UTZOO NetNews
230-Archive.
230-
230-It is not in a very reasonable format but it is all here. There were
230-141 magtapes in the collection and, so far, we have them organized to
230-reflect these tapes. You will find two types of files in this
230-directory:
230
230-        newsNNNfM.tgz   the archives, tar'd and compressed
230-and     newsNNNfM.toc   the tables of contents (tar listings)
230-
230-where   NNN     is the tape number (from 001 to 141)
230-and     M       is the save set number (from 1 to 3 but usually 1).
230-
230-There is also a file called AllTOC.tgz which is a compressed tar archive
230-containing all of the .toc files.
230-
230-Please note that news001f1.tgz contains A news. All of the other tapes
230-contain B news. The news in this archive was collected between February
230-of 1981 and June of 1991. (The Scavenged.tgz file contains A news articles
230-which were "found" off the end of some of the earlier tapes.)
230-
230-Also below here is an 'info' directory which contains several useful
230-files with "overviews" of some of the archive information. Hopefully
230-the filenames will explain what they are. (I know, probably not.)
230-
230-The 'pc' directory contains Windows code which can unpack .tgz files. I
230-have also been told that the latest versions of WinZip can also read them.
230-
230--- magi