Charles Babbage Institute News and Information

The IEEE Life Members' Prize in Electrical History, supported by the IEEE Life Members' Fund and administered by the Society for the History of Technology, is awarded annually to the best paper in the history of electrotechnology--power, electronics, telecommunications, and computer science--published during the preceding year. Any article published in a learned periodical is eligible if it treats the art or engineering aspects of electrotechnology and its practitioners. The article must be written in English, although the journal or periodical in which it appears may be a foreign language publication. The prize consists of a cash award of $500 and a certificate. To nominate an article, please send a copy of the paper to each member of the prize committee. Deadline is 15 April.

For more information, please contact the committee chair or Bernie Carlson, SHOT Secretary, 434.987.6230, shot@virginia.edu.
http://www.historyoftechnology.org/awards/ieee.html

Posted by cbi at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by cbi at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A strong pool of candidates applied for the Arthur L. Norberg Travel Grant this year, resulting in an exceptional four awards!
Congratulations to Mara Mills an assistant professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, Madeleine Monson-Rosen a doctoral candidate in English at University of Illinois-Chicago, Kevin Gotkin a Ph.D. student in Communication at University of Pennsylvania, and Jeffrey Matsuura an attorney for the Alliance Law Group in Falls, Church, VA.

We look forward to their upcoming visits to CBI!

Posted by cbi at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Charles Babbage Institute is accepting applications for the 2012-2013 Adelle and Erwin Tomash Graduate Fellowship. The fellowship will be awarded to a graduate student for doctoral dissertation research in the history of computing.

The fellowship may be held at the recipient's home academic institution, the Charles Babbage Institute, or any other location with appropriate research facilities. The stipend is $14,000. It is intended for students who have completed all requirements for the doctoral degree except the research and writing of the dissertation.

Preference will be given to applicants indicating a need to use CBI materials, planning research in residence at CBI, and willing to make a brief presentation of their research findings to CBI staff. Questions pertaining to collection content and access can be directed to Susan Hoffman, CBI Archivist, at s-hoff@umn.edu.

Tomash Fellowship recipients must remain students in good standing throughout the term of their fellowship, but there is no restriction on holding other fellowships, scholarships, or awards concurrent to the Tomash Fellowship.

To Apply:

Applicants should send to CBI a curriculum vitae and a five-page (single-spaced) statement and justification of the research project including a discussion of methods, research materials, evidence of faculty support for the project, and bibliography (bibliography does not count toward page count).

Applicants should also arrange for three letters of reference and certified copies of graduate school transcripts to be sent directly to CBI.

Materials must be postmarked no later than January 17, 2012.

Charles Babbage Institute: Tomash Fellowship
211 Andersen Library
University of Minnesota
222 - 21st Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Please direct questions about the Tomash Fellowship to Jeffrey Yost, CBI Associate Director, yostx003@umn.edu, 612.624.5050

Posted by cbi at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Arthur L. Norberg Travel Fund provides short-term grants-in-aid to help scholars with travel expenses to use archival collections at the Charles Babbage Institute. Each year we plan to award two $750 grants.

The Charles Babbage Institute (CBI) is an internationally recognized research center and archives focused on the history of information technology. CBI conducts major research projects; publishes books and articles; and collects, processes, and provides open public access to the most diverse and extensive collection of archival materials on computing, software, and networking in the world. CBI collections include the records of corporations, technical and trade associations, personal papers, industry publications, oral histories, photographs, film/video, and an extensive reference library. The Norberg Travel Fund is named for CBI's founding director, Arthur L. Norberg, and is funded by generous gifts from his friends and colleagues.

List of past recipients

To Apply:

Applicants should send a 2-page CV as well as a 500-word project description that describes the overall research project, identifies the importance of specific CBI collections, and discusses the projected outcome (journal article, book chapter, museum exhibit, etc.). Applicants are strongly encouraged to examine the extensive on-line finding guides to CBI's 200-plus archival collections at www.cbi.umn.edu/collections/archmss.html. Applicants should estimate how many days they plan to use CBI collections during their visit (travel should generally be in the calendar year of the award). To be eligible, scholars will reside outside the Twin Cities metropolitan region.

Notification of awards will be made within four weeks, and travel can commence directly thereafter. Questions pertaining to collection content and access can be directed to Susan Hoffman, CBI Archivist, at s-hoff@umn.edu. Please direct questions about the Arthur Norberg Travel Fund to Jeffrey Yost, CBI Associate Director, yostx003@umn.edu, 612.624.5050. For additional information, see www.cbi.umn.edu.

Materials must be submitted by email to cbi@umn.edu or postmarked no later than January 17, 2012.

Charles Babbage Institute: Norberg Travel Fund
211 Andersen Library
University of Minnesota
222 - 21st Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Posted by cbi at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Department of Archives and Special Collections will be providing limited service the first week of January 2012. January 3-6 ASC will not be registering new researchers or pulling any materials for research use. Researchers who have registered with us by December 1 and have materials already available in the reading room will be accommodated. The reading room will be open 8:30-4:30 M-F beginning Monday, January 9. Wednesday and Thursday evening hours resume January 18. Please contact Susan Hoffman, Interim CBI Archivist with questions or concerns at s-hoff@umn.edu or 612 625-9053.

Posted by cbi at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Check out this great review, How Computing Became a Man's World, of Misa's book Gender Codes in the journal Sex Roles. The IEEE Computer Society is singled out as having "performed a real service with this collection in terms of deepening the historical context of the issue." Nice work!

Posted by cbi at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Oops! CBI Oral History database is currently unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience but our oral history database is currently experiencing some technical difficulties. We are working to make our oral histories available again soon!

Posted by cbi at 8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hi all,

Just a quick note to let you know that I will, sadly, be leaving CBI after this week. It has been a great pleasure working here, and I will very much miss the people and the collections. Taking my place will be the lovely and competent Susan Hoffman (s-hoff@umn.edu), so if you need anything archives-related, please don't hesitate to contact her.

Best wishes to all.
-Stephanie

Posted by Stephanie Crowe at 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The application deadline for the 2011-12 Andersen Library Research Scholars travel fellowship is September 30, 2011. Feel free to email me for more information or application details.

Fellowship Description
The Elmer L. Andersen Research Scholars Program supports scholarly research projects using materials from the Libraries' rare and special collections. Named for former governor and University of Minnesota regent Elmer L. Andersen, the new program honors the Governor's passion for collecting and for expanding the use
of the collections. The Research Scholars program is available to scholars including faculty, graduate, postgraduate, and independent researchers using the collections in the Department of Archives and Special Collections. This program is not available to currently enrolled University of Minnesota graduate or undergraduate students or UM faculty.

The program will provide annual support for up to two research projects that require use of one or more of the collections. Awards range from $500 to $2,000 and provide funds for travel, housing and other research related costs. The final research product (e.g., journal article, documentary film) must acknowledge the Libraries' support and be deposited with the University Libraries.

Posted by Stephanie Crowe at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Congratulations to the three winners of 2011 ACM History Committee Fellowships:

Inna Kouper (Indiana University--Bloomington) for a project on "History of ACM SIGWEB as a framework for a conceptual history of hypertext."

Andrew L. Russell (Stevens Institute of Technology) for a project on "European Contributions to Computer Networks: An Oral History Project." Andrew was also a CBI Tomash Fellow from 2006-2007.

Ksenia Tatarchenko (Princeton University) for a project on "Computer Science from Silicon Valley to Golden Valley."

You can see a full description of their projects here.

Posted by Stephanie Crowe at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Next Tuesday, June 14, from 7:00-8:30pm, CBI director Tom Misa will be giving a talk on IBM-Rochester at the University of Minnesota's Rochester campus. If you are in the Rochester region, please attend! Details are available here.

Posted by Stephanie Crowe at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The IEEE Life Members' Prize in Electrical History, supported by the
IEEE Life Members' Fund and administered by the Society for the
History of Technology, is awarded annually to the best paper in the
history of electrotechnology--power, electronics, telecommunications,
and computer science--published during the preceding year. Any article
published in a learned periodical is eligible if it treats the art or
engineering aspects of electrotechnology and its practitioners. The
article must be written in English, although the journal or periodical
in which it appears may be a foreign language publication. The prize
consists of a cash award of $500 and a certificate. To nominate an
article, please send a copy of the paper to each member of the prize
committee. Deadline is April 15.

For more information, please contact the committee chair or Bernie
Carlson, SHOT Secretary, 434.975.2190, shot@virginia.edu.

2011 IEEE Life Members' Prize Committee

Eden Medina, chair
School of Informatics and Computing
Indiana University
901 E. 10th Street, Room 305
Bloomington, IN 47408
eden.medina@gmail.com

Ross Bassett
History Dept.
North Carolina State University
350 Withers Hall
Campus Box 8108
Raleigh, NC 27695-8108
history485@gmail.com

Mats Fridlund
Associate Professor/ Universitetslektor
Dept of Philosophy, Linguistics & Theory of Science
University of Gothenburg
Box 200, Olof Wijksgatan 6, Room T328
SE-405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden
mats.fridlund@gmail.com

Posted by Stephanie Crowe at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CBI is happy to present Andrew McGee as our 2011-2012 Erwin & Adelle Tomash Fellow. Andrew is a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia and his project, entitled "Mainframing America: Computers, Systems, and the Transformation of U.S. Policy and Society, 1940-1985," is on the history of computer use in civilian government, specifically looking at computing within the Social Security Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and other departments and agencies of the U.S. federal government. Congratulations Andrew!

We also had the pleasure of awarding our 2011 Arthur L. Norberg Travel Grants to Hansen Hsu and Rachel Lee. Hansen Hsu is a doctoral candidate at Cornell University working on a social history and ethnographic study of the "Cocoa" software developer community. Rachel Lee is a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester and her dissertation is entitled "Media of the Imagination: Romantic Poetry, Media History, and the Digital Humanities." Congratulations!

Posted by cbi at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Monday, February 07, 2011

Presenter: Thomas J. Misa
Affiliation: University of Minnesota, Charles Babbage Institute
Website: http://www.cbi.umn.edu/about/misa.html
Time: 11:15 - 12:15
Location: Keller Hall 3-125
Host: John Riedl

Abstract: The Charles Babbage Institute is conducting a historical assessment of NSF's FastLane system. This paper presents early data from our documentary research, interviews with FastLane's designers, and extensive interviews with FastLane users at university campuses across the country as well as "legacy users" at NSF itself. We are also collecting data with a website we created for users to do self-paced interviews . Our research aims to document FastLane as a pioneering instance of e-government as well as to explore two lines of analysis. First, what lessons can be learned from FastLane's design, implementation, and on-going use that might guide present efforts in cyberinfrastructure? Second, what have been FastLane's implications and consequences--for NSF itself, for research universities, and for the national research enterprise? We direct special attention to two populations of concern identified by NSF: the historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), and the "EPSCoR" states that receive less than median NSF funding. There is an important public policy question whether FastLane has served to impede or to promote NSF-funded activity at these institutions.

Bio: Thomas Misa directs the University of Minnesota's Charles Babbage Institute, a leading international center for the history of information technology. He is a faculty member in the ECE department, holder of the ERA Land-Grant Chair in the History of Technology, and teaches in the Program for History of Science and Technology. His latest book is Gender Codes: Why Women are Leaving Computing (IEEE Computer Society Press, 2010).

Posted by cbi at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)