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We've updated our finding aid for CBI 32, the National Bureau of Standards Computer Literature Collection. Also, we have added a new finding aid to our web site: the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Conference Papers, CBI 196.
Enjoy the holiday break! The blog will likely not be updated regularly until the New Year.
This came around on a U of M Libraries listserv. It's an online alphabetizer that could be useful, I thought, for bibliographies. Are there other research applications that you can think of?
The High-Technology Company: A Historical Research and Archival Guide, a 1989 publication by Bruce Bruemmer (former CBI archivist) and Sheldon Hochheiser, is now available in PDF format through CBI's web site under Hosted Publications. The publication was "embraced by the Society of American Archivists for setting standards in the field of corporate archiving." Henry Lowood listed it in a 1997 paper as one of the three indispensable guides to archives in the history of computing.
See this post on Dan Cohen's Digital Humanities blog for intriguing information regarding a new alliance between Zotero and the Internet Archive, whereby scholars will be able to add scholarly content to a "Zotero Commons" that everyone can access.
Thanks to the Archives Next blog for bringing this to my attention!
SHOT has sent out a call for papers for the 2008 conference in Lisbon! See http://shotnews.net/?p=360 for more information.
This morning I attended the first of a five-part University of Minnesota Libraries series on information literacy. The whole point of the series is to help us rethink our methods for helping students become information literate, based on new thinking and scholarship about the structure of higher education. The goal for the university as a whole is to become more learning-focused, rather than instruction-focused. They've recently adopted 7 "Student Learning Outcomes," which can (and eventually will) be adopted by instructors with the goal of all students by the end of their undergraduate careers having gained proficiency in all of the areas.
Librarians, specifically, are charged with helping to integrate information literacy into the curriculum as a whole (rather than being focused exclusively on providing one-time in-person instruction sessions to classes, for instance). It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out in the next couple of years, and how CBI, and archives and special collections in general, will be able to participate.
An announcement I saw on Beyond the Job, a librarian blog, about a free online introduction to Zotero taking place in a month or so:
"Wednesday, January 23, 2008 beginning at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 1:00 Central, noon Mountain, 11:00 a.m. Pacific, and 7:00 p.m. GMT/UTC/Zulu:
The Mark of Zotero: Two-Clicks to Citation Management
Zotero, designed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, is a free citation manager that works as part of the Firefox web browser. It allows researchers to keep track of bibliographies, notes, even copies of articles and pictures-- all within the browser window. It integrates with several word processors to make creating a reference or a bibliography a two-click process. Chris Strauber, Reference and Web Services Librarian at Wofford College, will demonstrate the program and discuss it as a possible replacement for products like Procite and Refworks.
Hosts: South Carolina State Library and PASCAL (Partnership Among South Carolina Academic Libraries)"
See http://www.opal-online.org/progschrono.htm
and scroll down to find the link to the event room.
The most recent issue of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing is entitled "The Future and the Past: New Thoughts on the History of Computing." The issue is made up of articles coming from a conference hosted by CBI last summer in honor of retiring director Arthur Norberg. CBI's current director, Tom Misa, was the guest editor. The issue contains articles by Tom as well as by CBI researchers and donors William Aspray (a wonderful tribute to Arthur Norberg) and James Cortada. Please take a look; it's a fascinating read.
Readers at the University of Minnesota (and many other institutions) should be able to access the journal electronically through their library's web site. Also, Friends of CBI who donate $100 or more receive free issues of Annals with their membership.
The Program in History in the College of Arts & Letters at Stevens Institute of Technology invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professorship of the history of technology with a specialization in the history of American technology. The position begins August 15, 2008.
Candidates should possess a Ph.D. in history of technology, or science and technology studies by the start date. Candidates should evince a strong scholarly research program and hold the promise of superior teaching. A publication record is required.
At present the College of Arts & Letters is the undergraduate liberal-arts unit within Stevens Institute of Technology. A 2-3 course load first year, including an American history or history of science/technology survey course and an upper-level undergraduate elective course in an area of expertise. Participation is expected in developing the College-wide mission of addressing the traditional humanities and liberal arts through science and technology studies.
Deadline for applications is 1 February 2008.
Send only the following materials: letter of application, C.V., and the names of 3 referees to:
History of Technology Search Committee
College of Arts and Letters
Stevens Institute of Technology
Castle Point on Hudson
Hoboken, New Jersey 07030
(I saw this on the blog for the Society for the History of Information Technology.)
Those at the University of Minnesota might be interested in following this blog, which details upcoming events hosted by the University of Minnesota Libraries.
James Cortada has recently published a fascinating article entitled "Do We Live in the Information Age? Insights from Historiographical Methods." In it, Cortada argues for caution in applying labels to periods in history and suggests that we should be wary of considering our present day to be the "Information Age." Cortada mentions CBI several times in this article, including one very nice mention of us as "the world's most important center for the study of the history of computing." We have a collection of Cortada's research documents here, and they are currently in process.
The article was published in Historical Methods, Summer 2007. Readers at the University of Minnesota can access the journal online through the library's web site.