Charles Babbage Institute News and Information

CBI will be starting a new, exciting evening lecture series this semester, on Minnesota's hidden computing history. They will generally be held every month on a Wednesday from 7-8 pm, in Andersen Library, room 120. The first one will be Wednesday, September 17 (two weeks from yesterday). Anyone is welcome to attend!

Here are some more details about the first lecture:

"Minnesota's Hidden History in Computing: Why Not Silicon Valley?"
September 17th, 7-8 pm
Andersen Library 120 (West Bank)

Charles Babbage Institute
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis MN 55455

What made California's Silicon Valley into a world-famous center for computing, and could Minnesota have claimed this title? This informal evening talk, the first in a year-long series of public lectures given by staff at the Charles Babbage Institute, surveys the hidden history of computing in the Twin Cities and across the state. Minnesota's pioneering computer companies -- the Engineering Research Associates, Sperry-Univac, Control Data, Honeywell, Unisys, IBM-Rochester and others -- were second to none in innovative technology, people, and markets. The University made important advances in the early World Wide Web. This is a history that certainly needs to be better known.

Each of the monthly lectures, on Wednesday evenings, will explore a specific topic or company. We invite members of the public and university community to attend and learn more about Minnesota's "hidden history" in computing.

For more information:
www.cbi.umn.edu or 612-624-5050

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 08:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the rest of this week, Arvid and I will be on the West Coast at the annual Society of American Archivists conference, so we will likely not be able to respond to your questions until next week.

Remember, after Labor Day, Andersen Library will be open from 9-1 on Saturdays, with limited access for researchers.

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you are in the Champaign-Urbana (or is it Urbana-Champaign?) area, you might be interested in the following talk by Jim Cortada, whose papers we have here at CBI and who has been instrumental in the development of the Institute.

James Cortada: “How Demand-Side Computing Shaped the History of Digitization�

Monday, September 8, 2008

4:00-5:30 pm

LISB 126

Lecture Abstract: Normally the history of computing is told from the perspective of the engineers, firms, and the industries that invented, manufactured, and sold computers. It is also told largely as a US centric story. However, we are increasingly realizing that users were not passive players in this process; rather they used computers when it made sense to them and worked with vendors to develop what they needed. They also developed patterns of adoption that spread around the world. This talk will discuss how whole industries embraced computing and, in the process, changed how they performed their daily work.

Speaker Biography: Dr. James W. Cortada received his Ph.D. in Modern European History from Florida State University, and is the author of two dozen books on the history and management of information technology. His most recent project has been the 3-volume The Digital Hand, which surveys the use of computing in 36 industries over the past six decades. He leads research teams at the IBM Institute for Business Value that monitor use of computing around the world.

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am pleased to report that a large chunk of ACM's SIGPLAN Notices publication is now cataloged and available for research here at CBI. SIGPLAN Notices is the monthly publication of ACM's special interest group on programming languages. It should complement well the ACM Records that we'll be receiving and processing this fall.

We have some other ACM publications going through cataloging right now, and I will keep you updated on their further availability.

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pioneering female computer scientists to be topic of next RENCI Distinguished Lecture

This talk at Duke University on September 25 will be about the women ENIAC programmers, including Betty Holberton, whose papers we have here at CBI. I look forward to hearing about it - please leave a comment if you attend!

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 01:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Slight deviation from the history of computing, but I just wanted to recommend to all of you in the Cities the new Andersen Library exhibit. It's entitled Reaching for Gold: The YMCA and the Olympic Movement in China from 1895 to 1920, put on by the Kautz Family YMCA Archives. They've also got a live feed from the Beijing Olympics, so stop on by.

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Starting this September, the Andersen Library extended hours will be changing to (it is hoped) support more researchers. We will no longer be open late on Thursday nights. Instead, we will have Saturday hours, from 9:00 to 1:00 every week while school is in session (excluding holidays).

While this new schedule should support more walk-in researchers, our ability to page materials will still be somewhat limited on Saturdays. So, it will still be best to make an appointment with a staff member who works with your collection.

To sum up, our new hours starting after Labor Day will be 8:30 to 4:30 Monday-Friday and 9:00-1:00 Saturday.

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Please check out the Public Historian, a really interesting blog written by a PhD student in the history of sci/tech/med program here. Full disclosure - her latest post is full of some nice things to say about CBI.

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Computer History Museum has announced the inauguration of a new online search system for research in their collections and artifacts: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/.

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Herein the second installment of that riveting series, A Day in the Life of an Archivist. Today I spent some time working on creating what we in the biz call "vertical files" (any archivists out there know the origin of this term?). Basically, a vertical files are reference files - materials that aren't actually archival collections, but can still be useful to researchers. Vertical files might contain photocopied newspaper articles, pamphlets, or other reference material on a certain topic. I am lucky because former CBI employees kept extensive files on computing companies, individuals, and other subject areas. None of the files have, up till now, been officially accessible to researchers, but they could be a useful starting place for many research topics and so I've been moving things around, getting our new vertical files ready to be available.

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got back today from last week's RBMS (Rare Books and Manuscripts Section) preconference, and, though I've been busy catching up with things here in the office, I thought I'd take a few minutes to report on RBMS and particularly on the Blog Boot Camp seminar panel that I was a part of. We heard some pretty interesting and thought-provoking plenary talks about digitization of archives and special collections materials, which was the theme of the preconference. I particularly enjoyed hearing Rich Szary (from my alma mater) and Jackie Dooley, both of whom explained why we should "learn from the archivists" in terms of minimal processing and why we should be digitizing "with abandon," a great phrase.

The Blog Boot Camp seminar itself was a smashing success, if I do say so myself. We had an overflow crowd (about 30 people had to be turned away, unfortunately) and got a great discussion going. Over the following couple of days, a number of archivists and special collections librarians came up to me to tell me how inspiring the seminar was and how they plan to start blogs for their own institutions. Jackie Dooley, in the final plenary, mentioned how happy she was to see a blogging seminar here at RBMS. The whole thing was a great experience (and inspiring for me, too).

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Next Tuesday through Friday (June 24-27), CBI will be closed to researchers, as both Arvid and I will be in Los Angeles at the RBMS preconference. I will be checking email periodically, so if you have any questions, you can get in touch that way.

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Next Thursday (June 26), I will be on a seminar panel at the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section preconference, talking about this blog. The seminar is entitled "Blog Boot Camp: A Primer for Special Collections Staff." The chair of the seminar set up a blog about our panel, located here.

Leave a comment if you have any more questions. It should be a great experience. I'll be sure to post about it when I return from Los Angeles.

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CBI is in the news! One of the attendees at our History | Gender | Computing conference in May wrote this story, which was syndicated by the American Institute of Physics Inside Science News Service and published in MinnPost. They also used an image from our Control Data Corporation Records.

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 02:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Decided this morning to try something new with the blog. Along with announcements and other information, I will hereby be presenting a series called from now on, very creatively, "A Day in the Life of an Archivist." This is on the off chance that you are interested in what actually goes on behind the scenes at an archives, and because I've heard that one of the code-word professions for CIA operatives is "archivist" because no one knows what it actually means.

Feedback is most welcome.

June 13 (Friday the 13th): We recently got these two donations that I mentioned yesterday, and so this morning I've been going through one of them, seeing what's included and reboxing it for later processing. I'm also doing some preliminary light preservation work, such as dismantling a scrapbook and putting its contents in an acid-free folder. (In case you're interested, I do this because many times, it's not the album itself that has research value, it's the contents, and a folder is much better for preserving the contents than plasticky, sticky pages.)

We have three research appointments for today, and so I'll be doing some work with researchers this afternoon.

Posted by Stephanie Horowitz at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)