Hello All, As Jim said, Japanese material would not be rare enough, there is a web book store in which many small book stores are participated. You should use this site using Japanese, but it may be of your help: http://www.kosho.or.jp/ Its title is Nihon-no-Furuhon-ya, meaning Japanese Used Book Dealers. If other Japanese researchers on the list have another idea, please make another recommendation. I am happy to discuss with you on this matter to decide which is the best one to offer for Jim, because he needs one per each country. Chigusa Kita 2009/9/29 James Cortada <jwcorta@us.ibm.com>:
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@us.ibm.com 608-270-4462
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