The Simon Newman papers are divided into six series: American University, Conferences, Name and Topical, Personal, the United States Patent Office, and Writings. The papers mostly contain the extensive research that Newman did on indexing, machine translation and information retrieval, but also include papers from his time working for the United States Patent Office, American University, and for his own documentation and insurance firms. Also included are Newman’s writings on different subjects, including his work at the patent office and his studies on language and computing, some personal items, graded papers from his time as a professor at American University, documents from different conferences, and both personal and professional correspondence. The grand majority of the collection is paper documents; there is one small item of realia in the form of a banner from a conference, and a set of slides from teaching a class at the patent office. The papers cover approximately from 1955 to 1985, with the bulk of dates being from the sixties.
Simon “Si” M. Newman was born on November 3rd, 1906 in Rockville Centre, New York. He attended Columbia University in the nineteen-twenties, and received his bachelors of the arts, bachelors of science, and masters in engineering in the field of engineering there. After that, he attended American University and graduated with a degree in law and masters of patent laws in 1932.
Newman worked for the United States Patent office and for National Insurance concurrently for many years; all in all, he worked for National Insurance for 31 years, and the patent office for 32 years. While at the patent office, he worked as an examiner, classifier, researcher, and Acting Associate Director of Research and Development. He wrote a variety of items on his time at the Patent Office, including in-house guides, as well as published articles about indexing.
Newman also published pieces on information retrieval, machine language, and overall language analysis. He did extensive research on the topics of indexing, machine translation, information retrieval, and so on. He was highly interested in libraries and computers, and was convinced that the best way to improve computer information retrieval was by creating an agreed upon vocabulary by which computers and people would communicate; he called this language “ruly English,” as he considered the majority of English conventions to be “unruly.”
After Newman retired from National Insurance and the Patent Office, he started his own insurance and documentation firms, as well as served as a consultant to the National Academy of Sciences, the Army Research Office, and the University of the State of New York. He was also a delegate from the American Documentation Institute (ADI) for the Federation Internationale de Documentation (FID) and the National Academy of Sciences. Additionally, after ADI became ASIS-- The American Society for Information Science-- Newman served as its parliamentarian, and has many documents about ASIS for that reason.
For a time, Newman also worked for American University, teaching courses on libraries and indexing. Among his papers are reports from students about the field of indexing and what they learned in his lectures.
Newman married Sarah Herman, and had three children with her, one of whom, Mark Newman, worked for his insurance company for a time. Newman was famous among his friends and family for taking pictures and sending them to everyone he met. Among his papers are multiple thank you notes for pictures he took and sent out.
Simon Newman died on June 6th, 1985, at age 78.
Source:
Newman, Simon. Information systems compatibility. American University, 1965. Print.