Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a university based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a university based in Cambridge, Massachusetts founded in 1861.

Selected contributions related to documentation

For more details see entries for individuals' names as well as Further reading below.

• Microphotographic document reproduction on glass plates by Ralph Bennett.
• Microfilm Rapid Selector: Directed by Vannevar Bush. Worked on by Russell Coile and Claude Shannon
• Bibliographic coupling. M. M. Kessler
• INTREX. Carl F. J. Overhage organized a widely publicized conference in 1965 with published proceedings. It was followed by a heavily-funded project "directed toward new services and facilities for people who seek information in large libraries. The Project Intrex program includes: (1) the assembly and organization of an information store of sufficient size; (2) the development of the essential facilities for storing, retrieving, transmitting and displaying the information; (3) the study of the operations and reactions of users under varying conditions and (4) the design of user aids for a library providing both machine access and conventional services." (Overhage 1971). The project INTREX was widely regarded an expensive failure.
• Technical Information Project (TIP). The first online search system to retrieve citations on the basis of cited references or bibliographical coupling. (Bourne & Hahn 2003, 43).

Other individuals involved include Helen L. Brownson, Madeline M. (Berry) Henderson, Allen Kent, Marvin L. Minsky, James W. Perry, Charles H. Stevens, and Vernon D. Tate.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (n.d.). About MIT. Retrieved September 14, 2023, from https://web.mit.edu/about/

Further reading

See also articles on named individuals.

• Bennett, Ralph. "Lilliputan libraries." Technology Review 42 (Jan 1940): 114-115, 130, 132-34.

For INTREX:

• INTREX: Report of a Planning Conference on Information Transfer Experiments. September 3, 1965. Ed. by Carl F. J. Overhage and R. Joyce Harman. Sponsored by the Independence Foundation of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1965.
• Overhage, Carl F. J. Project Intrex: A Brief Description. ERIC report ED056732. 1971.
• Burke, C. B. "The Ford Foundation's search for an American library laboratory." IEEE Annals of the history of computing 24, No. 3 (July-Sept. 2002): 56-74.

For Technical Information project (TIP):

• Bourne, Charles P. & Trudi B.Hahn. A history of online information services, 1963-1976. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.

Papers

MIT Distinctive Collections, MIT Libraries, Room 14N-118, Cambridge, MA 02139 - (617) 253-5136 Collection includes the official records of MIT, the personal and professional papers of faculty, staff, and alumni, and the selected papers of non-MIT persons and organizations whose activities complement the holdings; These holdings reflect the research that led to many significant developments, such as radar, computers, and high-speed photography; Includes: Vannevar Bush's pioneering work in the development of analog devices; Whirlwind and SAGE; Time-sharing systems (1950s-1960s); Development of artificial intelligence as a general field of study (late 1940s-mid-1950s); Papers of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (1958-1979; 513 microfiches); Papers of Vannevar Bush (1921-?; bulk since 1956 ; 29.5 linear feet); Oral history transcripts documenting the history of computer projects at MIT (including Whirlwind, MAC, and AI Lab.); Collection about magnetic core memory (1932-1975; 75 cubic feet); All official records of MIT are restricted for 20 years from the date when they are written, but researchers may request access; Researchers are encouraged to contact the staff before visiting; Photoduplication services are available; There are well-indexed finding aids for many of the collections. (Source: Cortada, James W., Archives of Data-Processing History. Greenwood Press: New York, 1990, pp. 73-80.)