Collections

Simon "Si" Newman was a leader in indexing, information retrieval, and machine translation research. He worked for the United States Patent Office, as well as National Insurance and his own documentation and insurance companies. His papers contain his research, own notes and writings, and correspondence with others in the field of information science, communication, and documentation.

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.