The Hagley Library published collections continue to grow! In 2024, James W. Cortada, a longtime IBM employee and current Senior Research Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Charles Babbage Institute, graciously donated a wide selection of books and archival materials to Hagley. Since early this summer, I have been cataloguing published works (i.e. books, pamphlets, trade catalogs) from the collection and adding them to our stacks.
Dr. Cortada has donated to Hagley before, in 2018. This gift added over 3,500 published works to our online catalog, which significantly increased our holdings on computer science and complemented our ever-growing collection of technology sources. The collection that I am working on currently is strengthening this foundation, adding numerous titles that pertain to computer history with a sharp focus on the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
Many titles are historical accounts of IBM, providing narratives of the corporation’s accomplishments, as well as its challenges over the years. Beyond the mass-market corporate history books, there are numerous works by former employees, providing unique inside perspectives of the company. This portion of the collection is comprehensive and largely includes materials from "IBMers" in the United States, though many are from employees in Europe and South America. As such, there are quite a few publications that are only available in languages other than English. An overarching thread tying these memoirs together is the diversity of views of the IBM corporate culture.
Aside from corporate histories, memoirs, and biographies, another generous section of the collection is dedicated to technical documents that pertain to IBM hardware and operating systems. Again, the Cortada collection is comprehensive in scope. Diving deep into the history of IBM, from punched-card systems to personal computer software, the collection has IBM handbooks, instruction guides, and manuals designed for users of the company’s machines and systems.
If you are interested in searching the items within this new collection, enter the James W. Cortada IBM Collection into the Library catalog's search box. Check back often, as the list will certainly grow in the coming months! So far, there are nearly 650 entries, but this number will grow well beyond that by the time the collection is fully catalogued.
To access these materials, contact Hagley Reference Services at askhagley@hagley.org. More information about using our collections is available at hagley.org/research.
Doug McQuirter is the Reference Archivist at Hagley Museum and Library