[SIGCIS-Members] A Favor to Each Other

[James Cortada]

Over the past 2 years I have been acquiring books and other publications
concerning the history of ICT from around the world, not just about the
USA, GB, and Japan as many of us have already done.  And in the process
have had enormous difficulty in finding materials for all the usual
reasons: lack of bibliographies, lack of ISBN numbers, ignorance about
which book dealers to go to etc.  When I find materials, it is often by
accident--clearly not a good way to gather materials.  It seems that every
time I go to a new country on business, I discover materials that are not
listed in the normal places; recently while in Switzerland, I came across a
book on the history of IT in Swiss railroads, another on Swiss banking, and
heard of a book being published later this year on the history of Swiss
ICT.

I would like to ask my colleagues if we each could share with everyone else
the names, addresses, and Internet location of the book stores in your
country that you find the most reliable for purchasing old and new
materials on the history of ICT.  I would be happy with one per country
where, for example, if I wanted all the key works on Finish or Polish
computing I could reach out to a book dealer, knowing that he or she would
find most if not all the materials.  One per country would be fantastic.
And if we could collect enough names, perhaps we could find a place to keep
the list, such as at the CBI website.  All of Europe, Latin America and
Asia need to be covered, regardless in what languages publications appear.

As an example of the problem, we all are familiar with Simon Nora and Alain
Minc's 1978 report to the French Government on ICT; the one volume was
translated into English by MIT, and it also appeared in Spanish and German.
But I could not find the full set of 5 volumes that the French government
published originally here in the US or in by chance visiting book shops in
Paris until one day by accident I found the full set and in reading that
set, I uncovered a considerable amount of useful information about ICT in
countries not discussed in the one volume summary that everyone has seen.
These kinds of materials have to be rescued, and used.

I feel a sense of urgency about this because I am now focusing on the
global history of ICT and find that the American university libraries are
missing a great many items and they are not showing up in the usual
Internet websites, such as abebooks.com, Alibris, etc. in sufficient
amounts.  So I have to build my own collection.  Furthermore, I would like
to build up a nice collection that, when I am finished with my research, I
can donate to CBI.,

Thanks in advance for your help to me and to each other,


Dr. Jim (James) W. Cortada
IBM Institute for Business Value
2917 Irvington Way
Madison, WI 53713 USA
jwcorta at us.ibm.com
608-270-4462
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20090929/2e50fae5/attachment-0001.htm>