Collections

The Tate Personal and Professional Papers document Vernon Tate's personal interests and activities along with many aspects of his professional career as a historian, librarian, and archivist between 1929 and 1989. Dr. Tate's papers contain correspondence, speeches, articles, meeting minutes, annual reports, newsletters, conference proceedings, press releases, dissertation research materials, and photographic and microphotographic research notes.

In December 1982, Dr. Vernon Tate donated a large collection of manuscripts and publications documenting the history of microphotography and his own career as a historian, archivist, librarian, and microfilm pioneer to The University of Michigan Libraries. This donation provided the impetus for the creation of the Power Collection for the Study of Scholarly Communication and Information Transfer in the Special Collections Library. The Power Collection is named in honor of Dr. Tate's long-time friend, Eugene B. Power, the founder of the micropublishing firm University Microfilms, Inc.

Dr. Tate's donations to the Power Collection contain over 140 linear feet of manuscripts, including his own personal and professional papers, an extensive collection of records of the National Microfilm Association (NMA), and the Microfilm Pioneers Collection which contains the papers of several of Dr. Tate's colleagues concerning microphotography and the activities of NMA. In addition, Dr. Tate donated an extensive collection of serials and monographs relating primarily to the fields of photography, microphotography, and archives.

The Tate Personal and Professional Papers document Vernon Tate's personal interests and activities along with many aspects of his professional career between 1929 and 1989. This group does not, however, include files from his work as Executive Secretary of the National Microfilm Association. Those materials can be found in the National Microfilm Association Records in this repository.

Dr. Tate's papers contain correspondence, speeches, articles, meeting minutes, annual reports, newsletters, conference proceedings, press releases, dissertation research materials, and photographic and microphotographic research notes. In addition, the collection contains log books (diaries), which contain his thoughts and notes on his personal and professional activities, although the log books will not be available for research until October 1, 2009.

Scattered materials concern Tate's activities between 1929 and 1935 as a student, researcher,and microfilmer for the Library of Congress. Included is correspondence, extensive research materials on the port of San Blas (his dissertation topic), and articles on maritime history and photography.

Large portions of several series concern the years between 1935 and 1946 during which Tate headed the photographic archives and research division of the National Archives and then served in the Navy during World War II. Almost two-thirds of the correspondence series and nearly half of Tate's speeches and writings date from this period. Besides these materials, the files contain inter-office memoranda, literature and notes on microphotography, and notes on his own experiments. Since Tate was the seventh professional staff member hired by the National Archives after its founding in 1935, the files include materials on the early development of the agency and the beginnings of the photographic laboratory and microfilm operation.

By the mid-1930's Tate was already one of the recognized authorities in the rapidly developing field of microphotography. In addition to his work at the National Archives, the files concern such topics as his work as editor of the Journal of Documentary Reproduction, 1938-1942; the early history of the American Documentation Institute and the Federation Internationale de Documentation; and his involvement in the work of the Microcard Committee. A small amount of correspondence concerns the establishment and early history of the National Microfilm Association, 1944-1946, before Tate became an officer.

The amount of material declines significantly for the years after 1946. Materials relating to his work as Director of Libraries at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and subsequently as Librarian and Archivist at the U.S. Naval Academy appear, but they are smaller in quantity and less complete than the materials on earlier years. Although the Tate Papers do not concern his work as an officer of the National Microfilm Association, they do document many professional activities not connected with NMA. Included is material on his various library and archival positions and his involvement with such organizations as the American Documentation Institute and the Federation Internationale de Documentation.

In addition to documenting many of Tate's professional activities, his papers concern family matters and personal interests. The correspondence series includes a small sequence of family letters exchanged between Tate and his wife, parents, and other relatives. The personal interests series contains information on his hobbies and interests, especially in naval history and other nautical matters, but also in such areas as antiques, art, books and printing, history, and libraries.

Federal program to promote the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) by providing matching grants to community based organizations to help them use or provide telecommunications for new opportunities, especially for unserved or under-served groups. Records include project proposals, reports, sound and video recordings relating to individual projects, websites and other digital records.

(NOTE: More information about the TOP collection, which is part of the TOP Data Archive, can be found at the following link: http://www.si.umich.edu/toparchive. Included at this website are electronic documents, web pages, and datasets created by the Technology Opportunities Program as well as related documents created by researchers and students at the University of Michigan School of Information.)

The TOP Data Archive was initiated in 2004 by the University of Michigan School of Information. In addition to TOP itself, partners include the Community Informatics Initiative at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the Educational Development Corporation, the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, and the U of M Special Collections Library.

The TOP Data Archive is distributed, with physical materials in the U-M Special Collections Library and electronic materials online at one or more locations. As of 2006, the electronic materials are still being processed.

This idea behind assembling this data archive was to preserve important records concerning how local communities are entering the digital age, and create a foundational dataset for the emerging field of Community Informatics. This field examines communities and information and communications technology. It emerged in the 1990s from experiments with technology in communities which have been carried out worldwide, at the grassroots level and/or by means of national and international funding initiatives.

The TOP Data Archive includes 1) information assembled in the course of a federal agency managing its projects, 2) that same information re-purposed for research use, and 3) new information brought in for research purposes. The federal agency is the Technology Opportunities Program (TOP) within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce. TOP funded projects from 1994-2005, and is expected to continue managing already-funded projects into 2007.

The records in the TOP collection--that part of the TOP Data Archive which is in the holdings of the Special Collections Library--represent grant proposals submitted to TOP and project materials created by TOP and its grantee organizations, known as TOP projects, during the period of 1994-2005. The collection is not inclusive of all 606 TOP projects. TOP was able to locate and provide for the collection project documents and Audio/Visual materials for about 88 TOP projects. These were materials that the projects submitted to TOP over the years. The TOP project materials are represented by many different formats, including paper, multimedia compact discs, floppy disks, cassette tapes, and video recordings.

The records of the TOP collection are arranged into eight series: Proposals, Project Documents, Project Reporting System, Project CDs, Project Floppy Disks, Project Cassette Tapes, TOP and NTIA, and Video Recordings. Later additions may be found in Proposals, Project Documents, and Video Recordings in Box 17.

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.

Librarian and manager of technical information services at the Institute for Defense Analysis, Arlington VA. Expert on production and dissemination of technical reports by government agencies. Active in a variety of groups including the Committee on Information Hang-ups; later joined the staff of the National Technical Information Service. The collection contains correspondence, meeting minutes, agendas, reports, notes, and articles.

The Smith Papers document the work of the COMMITTEE ON INFORMATION HANG-UPS from 1969 to 1986, related USER GROUPS from 1971 to 1981, the SHARED BIBLIOGRAPHIC INPUT EXPERIMENT from 1973 to 1981, and the DEPOSITORY LIBRARY COUNCIL TO THE PUBLIC PRINTER from 1974 to 1979. The collection contains correspondence, meeting minutes, agendas, reports, notes, and articles. Also included are IDA LIBRARY/TECHNICAL INFORMATION SERVICES annual reports, covering the work of Smith and her staff between 1970 and 1980, and PUBLICATIONS of the Committee on Information Hang-Ups and other user groups. The bulk of the collection dates from the time when Smith served at IDA. Very little is from after she joined NTIS.

The focus is on the work of user groups in influencing policies on the pricing and dissemination of information of Federal government agencies, especially the Defense Documentation Center, the National Technical Information Service, and the Government Printing Office. A name index to correspondence in the collection is available.

The records of the National Microfilm Association concern the work of the organization between 1944 and 1973, with scattered materials documenting some activities as late as 1990. The materials consist of correspondence, constitutions, by-laws, handbooks, meeting minutes, membership lists, biographical information, financial records, company publications, and articles and scholarly presentations.

In December 1982, Dr. Vernon Tate donated a large collection of manuscripts and publications documenting the history of microphotography and his own career as a historian, archivist, librarian, and microfilm pioneer to The University of Michigan Libraries. This donation provided the impetus for the creation of the Power Collection for the Study of Scholarly Communication and Information Transfer in the Special Collections Library. The Power Collection is named in honor of Dr. Tate's long-time friend, Eugene B. Power, the founder of the micropublishing firm University Microfilms, Inc.

Dr. Tate's donations to the Power Collection contain over 140 linear feet of manuscripts, including his own personal and professional papers, an extensive collection of records of the National Microfilm Association (NMA), and the Microfilm Pioneers Collection which contains the papers of several of Dr. Tate's colleagues concerning microphotography and the activities of NMA. In addition, Dr. Tate donated an extensive collection of serials and monographs relating primarily to the fields of photography, microphotography, and archives.

The earliest records concern a meeting held in 1944 to discuss the creation of a microfilm trade association and the subsequent NMA founding convention held in Cleveland, Ohio, in March 1945. Included in the collection is the correspondence of Franklin Morgan, one of the organizers of these two meetings and the first president of NMA, covering June 1944 to October 1945.

Morgan resigned as president in October 1945 and vice president Eugene Power succeeded him. At about the same time the board of directors hired Wilfred Knighton as secretary. He served in this position until September 1946, when the board replaced him with Vernon Tate.

The records covering the first years of NMA's existence are fairly substantial. For these years the files contain extensive correspondence of the presidents and secretaries of the organization, along with minutes of annual meetings and board meetings and scattered materials on committees and finances.

After the first few years, NMA declined in strength and activity and the quantity and quality of the records reflects this. There apparently were no annual meetings after 1946 and no board meetings after 1947. The president and secretary continued an active correspondence through 1948, although many of the letters from 1947 and 1948 concern attempts to revitalize the organization.

Between 1949 and 1951, NMA was completely dormant. The only records consist of occasional letters inquiring about the organization or specific questions on microfilming techniques. Vernon Tate continued to answer letters addressed to NMA, even though the organization was inactive.

With the revitalization of NMA after a meeting at the Library of Congress in 1952, extensive files on all aspects of the organization's work appear once again. One major difference in the records, however, is that the correspondence file no longer contains a complete record of the president's correspondence. It consists of letters received and sent by executive secretary Vernon Tate, with occasional copies of presidential letters sent to Tate for his information.

The records grew in quantity and complexity as the years passed, especially during the 1960s when NMA underwent tremendous growth in membership and activities. It was at this time that the organization established much of its committee structure, founded state and regional chapters, and began a Fellows organization for individuals who had been awarded that honor.

In 1969, NMA hired a professional executive vice-president who took over some of Vernon Tate's duties. The following year the organization moved its headquarters from a building owned by Tate in Annapolis, MD, to Silver Spring, MD, closer to Washington. The files for succeeding years reflect Vernon Tate's increasingly limited role and no longer include the files generated by the headquarters staff.

Tate left his positions with NMA at the end of 1973 and the scattered materials in the collection dating from later years relate mainly to his continuing role with the Fellows organization. Included are correspondence and minutes of Fellows meetings.

Researchers should be aware that some NMA-related materials also appear in Tate's Personal and Professional Papers. Included in that collection is Tate's correspondence concerning the organization for the years 1944 to 1946, before he became an officer, and scattered correspondence from the years after Tate left his positions with NMA in 1973.

Additional materials on NMA appear in the Microfilm Pioneers Collection. Several officers of the organization donated their papers to that collection.

Materials relating to the work of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science and the 1979 and 1991 White House Conferences on Libraries and Information Services. Includes correspondence, committee files, clippings and subject files.

Lester O. Kruger was a long-time 3M employee and a leader in the micrographics industry. As an active member of the National Micrographics Association and Association for Information and Image Management, Kruger helped develop national and international micrographic standards. This collection documents Kruger's career and involvement with Filmsort/3M, NMA, and AIIM.

The Lester O. Kruger Papers are divided into 8 series: National Micrographics Association (NMA), Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), 3M, Personal, Photographs, Microforms, Printed Material, and Realia. Largely consisting of professional papers, the collection documents Kruger's work in micrographics, imaging, and standards. Included are correspondence and memoranda between colleagues, organizational correspondence and information, meeting reports and resolutions, drafts of proposed standards, presentation drafts, photographs, and microfiche. The collection contains a smaller amount of more personal material, pertaining to Kruger's career and achievements. These include: awards, plaques, a scrapbook, photographs, ephemera, and a small quantity of personal correspondence with professional colleagues. Realia related to micrography, including microfilm viewers and a medallion from an NMA conference, make up the final series in the Kruger Papers.

Papers of John Gantt, microfilming pioneer and head of Photoduplication at the University of Michigan Graduate Library, including reference file on products and equipment used in the microfilming and other reproduction processes.

The John Gantt papers consist of product literature, equipment brochures and manuals, reports, articles, and scattered correspondence. A small amount of material concerns the work of the Photoduplication Service, but the bulk of the collection is a reference file on products and equipment relating to microfilming and other copying processes. Included is information on developing machines, printers, enlargers, film processors, exposure controls, cameras, readers, cabinets, boxes, filters, films, microfiche, and document retrieval systems.

Some of this material is arranged by company and some by subject.

The George H. Harmon Papers, 1959-1985 consist of subject files, correspondence, product literature, press releases and newsletters, magazine clippings, and periodicals and books concerning the research and development of microfilm and corresponding companies and organizations. Subject files include material on the National Microfilm Association, particularly for the years 1969 to 1971, the International Micrographic Congress (1965-1982), the development of the FR80 computer output microfilm recorder, and work for the Western Electric Company and Information International, Inc. Principal correspondents include D.M. Avedon, O.G. Banks, L.J. Kiersky, M. Mandel, V.B. Phillips, J.R. Robertson, V.D. Tate, J.R. White, F.L. Williford, D.R. Wolf, and C.P. Yerkes.

The Harmon papers concern both his work for various employers and his N.M.A. activities. His Information International papers (1967-1973) deal primarily with the FR80 computer output microfilm recorders, while his Western Electric Company papers (1959-1967) relate to the joint Western Electric Company-Bell Telephone Laboratories Reproduction Committee.

While Harmon's N.M.A. files cover the years 1964-1984, the bulk of material dates from 1969-1971 when Harmon was an N.M.A. officer. The files concern N.M.A. board meetings, chapters, committees, conventions, and finances.

The Harmon papers also contain files of company and organization literature, periodical articles, and publications.

Librarian and information scientist, pioneered library automation at Library of Congress,also worked at General Electric and National Library of Medicine and taught at Indiana University Library School. Papers include collection includes his correspondence, reports, meeting agendas and minutes, system proposals, teaching materials, professional writings, calendars, and collected publications.

The Cloyd Dake Gull Papers are an important resource for examining the development of the field of information science. The collection includes his correspondence, reports, meeting agendas and minutes, system proposals, teaching materials, professional writings, calendars, and collected publications. The materials cover virtually all aspects of his career.

Although the collection contains a few papers from his own career as a student in the 1930s, there is little else that dates before Gull joined the staff of the Library of Congress in 1945. His Library of Congress materials, while not complete, do document a number of specific projects and show his early interest in applying punched cards and other new techniques to library work.

The collection contains a limited amount of material on his work at Documentation, Inc. from 1952 to 1954 helping to develop early information retrieval systems, especially the uniterm system of coordinate indexing. Only a small amount of material concerns his service with the National Research Council, although other papers from this era and up to the mid-1960s concern the workshops on information science which he taught at the University of Michigan and elsewhere.

The papers are more extensive for the years 1958 to 1963, when he was an information systems analyst for General Electric. Much is included on the operation of the GE Information Systems Operation as well as specific automation proposals they made for such customers as the University of Illinois - Chicago, the Library of Congress, and the National Library of Medicine. Included in the latter file is information on the development of MEDLARS.

Gull's papers on the American Documentation Institute concern his year as President, plus subsequent work by the Council and Executive Director. They also show his involvement in most annual meetings, 1959-1967. His materials on the International Federation for Documentation primarily cover 1960 to 1967 and concern the work of the U.S. National Committee, plus specific working committees on mechanized storage and retrieval, operational machine techniques and systems, and the universal decimal classification.

Materials concerning Gull's position as Professor at the Indiana University Library School include information on the courses which he taught, the overall program of the Library School, and his activities on various faculty committees, including the one which established a Ph.D. program. Some documents from this period also concern a number of outside consulting projects.

A significant amount of material concerns the work of the consulting firm Cloyd Dake Gull and Associates between 1969 and 1983, especially the automation studies and proposals which the company produced for various clients in the fields of information science and library science.