Rolf Berndtson, Dataföreningen i Sverige

Aim

The main objective of the project is to create, collect, preserve and make source material on Swedish IT-history between 1950 and 1980 available in the form of knowledge outlines, interviews, witness seminars and autobiographies. This material is administered and made avail-able by registration in existing databases and through publication of processed material in print and on the web. The work is done in accordance with scholarly methods and crite-ria, so that the results of the project can be used in future historical research in different disciplines. The project has four main tasks:

1) To organize and realize the collection of memories and material.
2) To make the results available in the form of databases and processed publications and to present the project and its results.
3) To compile knowledge outlines covering national and international research and existing empirical material and records.
4) To further develop and adapt methods of contemporary history to the study of technology and technology-related professional environments.

The project has been a collaboration between The Swedish Computer Society, The Dept. of History of Science and Technology at The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and The National Museum of Science and Technology. The general organization of the project and the choice of methods is the product of a four-year long cooperation between these three parties.

Results

The project has been carried out in two phases: initiation and consolidation. During the initiation phase, which took place 2004-06, the collaboration between the three parties was established. Furthermore, a number of interviews and witness seminars were carried out. On basis on the experiences made during the initiation phase the organization of the project was elaborated. Sixteen so-called focus areas in IT-history were identified, and the aim was to compose a focus group, consisting of a research secretary and a number of practitioners from the area in question, for each area. The focus areas were early computers, healthcare, financial industry, industry, IT-industry, systems development, user organizations and user participation, transports, defense, public administration, telecommunications, higher education, archives, libraries and museums, media, schools, and commerce.

During the consolidation phase, which took place between January 2007 and December 2008, the organization as well as all 16 focus groups was established. 16 research secretar-ies and a project secretary were assigned with the task to collect, document and edit source material within each area. The material was thereafter transferred to The National Museum of Science and Technology which classified it and made it available. After the documentation efforts had been finished the focus groups have successively phased out and each research secretary summarized his/her work in a final report.

The project has elaborated a comprehensive Project Manual that describes the organiza-tion of the project, the work flow within a focus group and the methods of the project. The project has in collaboration with Nordiska museet carried out a collection of autobi-ographies during 2007. The collection was successful; about 250 autobiographies were collected. Furthermore the project has developed a Writers' Web, with the URL http://ithistoria.se, during the autumn 2007. The Writers' Web had up to January 2008 received about 30 autobiographies.

The work in the 16 focus groups was finished at the end of 2008 and has resulted in 16 knowledge outlines, 47 witness seminars, 154 interviews and 16 final reports. The knowl-edge outlines are archived at the National Museum of Science and Technology. The ma-jority of the edited witness seminars are printed in KTH's working paper series TRITA-HST and available electronically at the Academic Archive On-line (DiVA): www.diva-portal.org. The edited interviews and the final reports are available at the National Mu-seum of Science and Technology's web page: www.tekniskamuseet.se.

Methodical problem

The biggest challenge for the project has been to carry out very extensive documentation efforts during a limited time period.

In order to carry out the work within the given time period 16 research secretaries were employed in time spans that varied between 1 month and 12 months. To coordinate and train them for the tasks was a big challenge. The project dealt with that by arranging an introductory workshop on methodology and by arranging frequent work meetings. In the research secretaries work with interviews and witness seminars there have been two criti-cal moments: firstly to plan interviews and seminars within a reasonable time, secondly to correct and approve the created and collected material. Recurrent obstacles for the research secretaries have been the travels, sicknesses and so forth of the informants.

Administration and dissemination of the results

As mentioned above the National Museum of Science and Technology will administer the material. A separate visibility project with the purpose to disseminate the results is planned.

A number of lectures/talks and seminars/conferences have been carried out:

1) A workshop at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm, 4 June 2007.
2) Per Lundin presented the project at the conference IFIP WG9.7 Second Working Con-ference on the History of Nordic Computing ii Turku, Finland, 21-23 August 2007.
3) A workshop on methodology, 24 August 2007. Invited lecturers were Thomas Misa, Torbjörn Nilsson, Lars Kaijser.
4) A kick-off for the project, 28 Augusti 2007.
5) Gustav Sjöblom presented the project and its methods for the research school Man-agement and IT (MIT), 6 February 2008.
6) Peter Du Rietz presented the project at Pelles Lusthus in Nyköping, 6 March 2008.
7) Peter Du Rietz presented the project at Teknik- och vetenskapshistoriska dagarna, 8 April 2008.
8) Gustav Sjöblom presented the project at Chalmers tekniska högskola, 17 April 2008.
9) A final conference for project, 18 June 2008 at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm.
10) Per Lundin & Isabelle Dussauge presented the project and its methods at the interna-tional conference SHOT in Lisboa, 14 October 2008.
11) Peter Du Rietz presented the project at Samdoks höstmöte, 21 November 2008.

Press releases about the project: 7/3 and 17/7 2007. Furthermore:
o 46 clippings (44 during 2007, 2 during 2008)
o 5 features in radio and television. 13,45 minutes (2007)
o Web articles: 17 (11 during 2007 and 6 during 2008)
o 703 hits on Google on "Från matematikmaskin till IT" (2008-11-17).

New research questions

The documentation effort that has been carried out by the project has contributed to a more comprehensive picture of the use of computers and IT in Sweden between 1950 and 1980. The user perspective in the material will make it possible to answer the over-arching question: How has computing changed the society?

The collected material has already resulted in the research project "Precursors of the IT-nation: Computer Use and Control in Swedish Society, 1955-1985",  funded by Jan Wallanders och Tom Hedelius Stiftelse and led by Arne Kaijser at the Division of History of Science and Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology. An ambition with this project is to answer the above mentioned question.