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.
The CBI spring newsletter is now available! Check it out for some scintillating articles by Tom and Jeff, as well as news from the director's desk and from the archives.
The front cover of the newest issue of College and Research Libraries News is a CBI image, from the Calvin Mooers Papers, showing a woman working with Zatocoding. Zatocoding was an information retrieval system developed by Mooers in 1947 that he once stated "antagonized librarians" because of its automation of the field. The issue also contains a brief explanation of the image, written by Arvid, on the table of contents page. Very exciting!
Here's a link to the cover: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2008/april08/April.cfm
From the SHOT blog:
Humanities and Technology Review is the journal of the Humanities and Technology Association. HTR is published annually in the fall, and it offers a publication outlet for interdisciplinary articles on a broad range of themes addressing the interface between the humanities and technology.
In the Fall 2008 edition we would like to address the theme of technology and the human condition. We encourage reflection on the impact of technology on the lived experience of peoples throughout the world. The theme can be taken broadly, but here are some ideas:
* Implications of new information technologies for the concept of the world citizen
* Moral responsibility for actions that occur at a distance
* Technology and Developing Countries
* Surveillance Technologies and Privacy Rights
* Technology and the Nature of Labor
* Intelligent Computer Agent “Behaviors” and Accountability
* Spoken Word (hip hop, poetry, free style) and Technology
The 2008 edition will also include a special section: Proceedings, Selected Papers of the 2007 HTA Conference, October 4-6, 2007, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
Frederick B. Mills, Editor
Humanities and Technology Review
Department of History and Government
Bowie State University
Email: fmills2003@yahoo.com
An article by Richard Cox, et al. combining archives and information technology - perfect for the CBI blog! Check it out here.
Check out this month's new Technology and Culture for Tom's review of Geoffrey Herrera's Technology and International Transformation. Technology and Culture is SHOT's quarterly journal. Tom's article is directly accessible here, and you can find the entire issue at http://etc.technologyandculture.net.
The January 2008 issue of the Newsletter of the History of Science Society contains an article by doctoral candidate Sage Ross on the importance of Wikipedia to historians - particularly historians of science, technology, and medicine. Ross convincingly urges scholars in STM fields to get involved in posting historically accurate content to articles on topics in their fields, stating that Wikipedia provides an unparalleled opportunity to make work available to a general audience. Do you think HSTM scholars have a responsibility to become involved in Wikipedia? What about engaging with a popular audience in general?
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.
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.
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.
And another Friday post! I just came across a call for encyclopedia entries for an ABC-CLIO Encyclopedia of American Technology. A link to the announcement is here.
The Charles Babbage Institute was asked to contribute a photograph for an essay on Seymour Cray for the book Minnesota 150: The People, Places, and Things That Shape Our State by Kate Roberts, senior exhibits developer for the Minnesota Historical Society. Minnesota citizens submitted thousands of nominations of people, organizations, places and events for the book, which celebrates the 150th anniversary of Minnesota’s statehood, which will take place in 2008. The book is in stores and libraries now.