[SIGCIS-Members] Data on Bitnet

[David Grier]

Kathrin
	Bitnet had an early variant of the of the listserve program developed by a student at the Ecole Politechnique in Paris.  The program ran on IBM mainframes.  It spread rapidly across the net though only a couple of dozen sites had large number of lists.  Most of the lists dealt with network management.  A number deal with with the usual techie hobbies.  A few took the Apranet lists and redistributed them.  (And you might want to look there in terms of chasing patent ideas.  Arpanet/CSnet/NSFNet were far more technically inclined than the Bitnet community.  In fact they advertised themselves as" the network for everybody else.”). 

A few of the list serves have been archived but they tended to be abandoned as schools switched their primary servers from 370 architecture machines  ro unix machines.  It is attached

I did an article on bitnet and the list serves in the Annals 20 years ago.  It is attached if it may be of use.  

David


> On Aug 25, 2020, at 12:07 PM, Wernsdorf Kathrin <kathrin.wernsdorf at ip.mpg.de> wrote:
> 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> My coauthors and I are currently working on a project measuring the impact of Bitnet on academic patenting. After the adoption of Bitnet by a university between 1981 and 1990, we find a substantial increase in patenting by university-affiliated researchers. We are now wondering why this is the case.
> 
> Reading about Bitnet, we came across the fact that email lists were an especially popular item. We think it would be fascinating to know the content of these email lists. Do you happen to know whether data on these email lists exists and is available somewhere? Also, do you know whether some archives of listserves or discussion groups exist where users discussed for what they used Bitnet and what challenges they faced?
> 
> Any thoughts and hints are highly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.
> 
> Kathrin
> _________________________________
> 
> Kathrin Wernsdorf
> 
> Doctoral Student and Junior Research Fellow
> 
>  
> Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
> 
> Marstallplatz 1
> 
> 80539 München
> 
> kathrin.wernsdorf at ip.mpg.de <mailto:kathrin.wernsdorf at ip.mpg.de>
> www.ip.mpg.de <http://www.ip.mpg.de/>
>  
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