Paula Newman
2006; updated 19 August 2025
The goal of the Book Collection Project is to provide source materials for current and future historians of computer software and hardware by identifying and annotating an ever-widening collection of significant and/or representative books of computer software and hardware. Annotations will include links to on-line editions, if available, and on content, author biographies, significance, authoring context, and other relevant materials. The books will be organized in useful ways, and annotations will include general material on subject groupings.
Items which are not owned by the Computer History Museum are referenced by link only.
Identifying books: In 2001 and 2002 Randall Neff and Ed Thelen, then volunteers at the Computer History Museum, compiled an extensive catalog of the museum book holdings. In late 2005 the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) asked members to nominate classic and favorite books that, if they were not still in print, might be reissued by ACM.* Then Bernard Peuto, chairman of the Software Preservation Group, suggested that the group itself produce an annotated list of the more significant books. And, finally, Paula Newman, another museum volunteer, responded by outlining in detail, and initiating, a project to use existing and augmented sources to produce a full annotated list of historic classic and favorite books, organized by topic area. This goal was pursued by members of the Software Preservation Group.
Organization: These books have been grouped into subject areas and ordered by date of first publication. While this organization is tentative, it should help to (a) identify missing categories and items and thus grow the list of books, and (b) identify sets of related books as focal points for annotation.
Sample annotations: One annotation was developed before the project terminated: [Minsky 1968].
Status: Work on this page halted before most topic-wide background information and individual book annotations were added.
* ACM ended up boiling down the member-submitted list to 25 "classics", many of which they provide free in PDF format -- see ACM Classic Books.