Hello SIGCIS,

Tom Misa mentioned this earlier, but I thought a reminder was justified. The ACM opened up free access to its digital library for COVID. The virus hasn’t gone anywhere, but AFAIK the access is still scheduled to expire at the end of June which is now just a few days away. As well as access to a mass of journal and conference publications going back to the 1950s this also includes the ACM Books series which is not always part of institutional bundles.

So with just a few clicks you could be the proud owner of:

Computing and the NSF, 1950-2016 by Freeman, Adrion & Aspray: https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/3336323

Code Nation: Personal Computing and the Learn to Program Movement in America by Halvarson: https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/3368274

Communities of Computing: Computer Science and Society in the ACM, Misa (ed): https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/2973856

Ada's Legacy: Cultures of Computing from the Victorian to the Digital Age, Hemmerman & Russell (eds.): https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/2809523

Edmund Berkeley and the Social Responsibility of Computer Professionals, Longo: https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/2787754

The full list of books is at https://dl.acm.org/acmbooks/archive and includes some other items of possible interest, including the first few in what is eventually intended to be a full set of compendia celebrating the contributions of Turing Award winners. The volume on Stonebraker, for example (https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/3226595), is packed with interesting material for students of DBMS history, though more as primary source than secondary.

Best wishes,

Tom