Assembled over the course of 15 years of research and teaching, the Thomas S. Mullaney East Asian Information Technology History Collection is one of a kind and will greatly deepen Stanford’s holdings. The collection is multi-faceted and multi-dimensional, containing rare machines alongside archival and printed documents.
Source: Stanford Libraries
“I did not realize that I had become a collector until about halfway through the process,” Stanford Professor of History Thomas S. Mullaney recalled. “I began by buying a few items from used bookstores for my research. Others were donated to me by people trying to find a home for their antiques. Only after my collection had grown did it dawn on me how rare and fragile these materials were. They needed a permanent home.”
Mullaney donated more than 2000 items, along with a detailed bibliography and high-resolution scans. Dating from the turn of the twentieth century to the present age of computing, the collection has strong Chinese holdings and additional materials from other East Asian countries. It documents the modern history of Chinese and East Asian telegraph codes, typewriters, printing, mimeographs, word processors, computers, and a host of other information technologies.
“We intend to invest modestly and selectively to build upon the collection by expanding its Japanese holdings and establishing a Korean section,” said Michael A. Keller, vice provost and the Ida M. Green University Librarian at Stanford. “Professor Mullaney will be an advisor to these expansions.”
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
