[SIGCIS-Members] HP Archives Destroyed in Recent California Fires

[Liza Loop]

The North Bay fires have truly left a sad legacy with the loss of this HP
archive. The fires came within 15 miles of the LO*OP Center History of
Computing in Learning and Education Archive as well. While LO*OP's
collection may be much smaller than that of HP it does contain some
irreplaceable artifacts and documents. I'm using this misfortune as an
occasion to ask for help in preventing another.

Please contact me if you could spare a day or more to come to the Russian
River and help stabilize and inventory a bit of our unprocessed material.
Once that is done we will be in a position to decide which documents are
worth scanning and which artifacts to photograph. These two steps, to be
done on site, are necessary in advance of curating the collection and
preparing online exhibits for the public. Much of the later curation can be
done remotely but first I need teams of two or three people at a time to
help with the physical work.

Please note that we are not duplicating the impressive initiatives
undertaken by the Computer History Museum and others. They are preserving
the history of the computing industry with in depth coverage of computer
scientists, inventors and industry giants. We are looking deeply and
specifically at the impact of computing on teaching and learning, both
formally in schools and universities and informally in clubs, libraries,
recreation centers and the like. Our heroes are the Educational Technology
Pioneers who envisioned and brought about new software, hardware and social
environments that have revolutionized education.

Contact me at lizaloop at loopcenter.org or by phone, 650 619 1099 (8 am to 10
pm Pacific time only).

Thank you in advance,

Liza Loop
Executive Director, LO*OP Center, Inc.





On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 2:32 PM, Brian Berg <brianberg at gmail.com> wrote:

> A very sad story here:
>  http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/7559762-181/hewlett-p
> ackard-archives-at-keysight-destroyed
>
> Chuck House responded to me re: this sad news with:
>
> *Sad on many fronts*
>
> *1.       Ironic, since HP was almost alone in Silicon Valley for hiring a
> curator thirty years ago to preserve its history*
>
> *2.       Ironic, that the curator (and subsequent ones) would not let
> historians or others have access to this tremendous history*
>
> *3.       Ironic, that HP is one of the digital electronics pioneers which
> offered a way to digitize this collection at any point in the last twenty
> years*
>
> *4.       Ironic, that a company so big, with such history, would have no
> sense of the value of what had been accumulated*
>
> *5.       Ironic, that the Computer History Museum here in town, never
> tried to get this archive*
>
> *Great lessons here*
>
> I knew that Chuck had been involved with helping to scan and archive
> Cisco's history.  When I pinged him about that, he wrote me re: his small
> treatise on this topic:
>  *Preserving our Digital Revolution Heritage: If not you, who?  If not
> now, when?
> <http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/charles-house/digital-revolution-heritage/paperback/product-22378873.html>*
>
> _________________________
> Brian A. Berg / bberg at StanfordAlumni.org
> Berg Software Design
> 14500 Big Basin Way, Suite F, Saratoga, CA 95070 USA
> Voice: 408.741.5010 <(408)%20741-5010> / Cell: 408.568.2505
> <(408)%20568-2505>
> Consulting: Flash Memory/USB/Storage/Patents
> visit the Storage Cornucopia: www.bswd.com
> FMS Technical Chair: www.FlashMemorySummit.com
> IEEE Milestone
> <http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:List_of_IEEE_Milestones>
> Coordinator for Region 6 <http://www.ieee-region6.org/>
> IEEE SCV Section <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r6/scv/> Past Chair / IEEE-CNSV
> <http://www.CaliforniaConsultants.org> Board Director
> IEEE Silicon Valley Tech History Committee
> <http://www.SiliconValleyHistory.com/> Chair
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion
> list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member
> posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list
> archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and
> you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/
> listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
>



-- 
Liza Loop
History of Computing in Learning and Education (HCLE) Project.
www.hcle.org
liza at hcle.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20171101/53b543fb/attachment.htm>