Bourne Collection Blu Ray

[Jackie Bullinger]

The papers of reformer, poet, editor, and clergyman William Oland Bourne (1819-1901) span the years 1841-1885, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1856-1867. As editor of the periodical The Soldier's Friend, Bourne sponsored a contest in 1865-1866 in which Union soldiers and sailors who lost their right arms by disability or amputation during the Civil War were invited to submit samples of their penmanship using their left hands. The contest, which awarded a total of $1,000 in prizes for the winning entries, was followed in 1867 by a second contest, which awarded $500 in prizes.

The Left-Hand Penmanship Contest submissions are arranged in two series (1865-1866 contest and 1867 contest), and then by the number Bourne assigned to each entry in the order of receipt. The finding aid to the collection identifies which entries are in which folder, and various name indexes provide the series and entry number for individual submissions. Eventually these name indexes will be consolidated and added to this Web site with hyperlinks to the individual entries.

Left-handed penmanship samples recopied in another hand, presumably by Bourne, can be found with some contest entries. In most cases a page of The City Record was used as a sort of folder, with identifying information written on what would have been the front of the folder. When a copy of The City Record was used to separate recopied penmanship samples, the front and back of The City Record page are presented first in this online presentation, followed by the recopied pages. Examples of this may be seen in the entries of William H. Thomas and Julius V. Wood. In some cases, like that of Seth Sutherland, the recopied pages are not housed in a City Record wrapper and simply follow other documents in the file.

This illustrated catalogue provides detailed information on 147 works from the collection of John G. Bourne. Each of the three geographical sections of the main catalogue opens with an introductory text on the art, culture and ceremonial features of that region, followed by discursive entries accompanying each work. A checklist provides summary information on the 150 remaining works in the collection. In addition to Mr. Bourne's fascinating account of his first expedition to Chiapas in 1945 and 1946, the catalogue includes an essay on the authentication of Pre-Columbian art.

Charlie Bourne was an expert in computerized search for 40 years before Google. CHM has recently finished cataloging his unique collection of materials documenting the history of online search and information systems from the 1950s onward, supported by a generous grant from the National Archives.

Many of us assume that retrieving and browsing information online arose with the web in the 1990s, instantly catapulting us from thumbing through dusty card catalogs to the millisecond response time of modern search engines. Older computer insiders may have vaguely heard of one or two specialized earlier computerized services, like LexisNexis for journalists and lawyers, or the pricey Dialog.

By the late 1950s, manufacturers were selling a Rube Goldbergian mix of different storage and retrieval technologies to governments, corporations and the military: Rapid Selectors capable of searching 330 pages per second on microfilm, magnetic media or microfilm integrated into punched cards, and various futuristic looking viewers. Some were already computer controlled, and major conferences were starting up around how computers would soon revolutionize the entire field.

This is the background against which Charlie Bourne, a student of computing great Harry Huskey, was turned on to information retrieval by another one of his professors at UC Berkeley, Douglas Engelbart. As we'll see he has spent the rest of his long career at the intersection of the two fields.

After graduating Charlie took a job at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), where he evaluated and wrote specifications for a number of retrieval systems: a microfilm system to handle three million records for the Air Force, an automated system to coordinate collecting and translating Soviet bloc literature, a Navy database to inventory every kind of radio signal from enemy equipment for shipboard use, and so on.

His old professor Doug Engelbart soon moved to SRI himself, and in 1963 Charlie helped him with a pioneering experiment he described in his 2015 oral history for CHM, excerpted at the top of this blog.

Charlie wrote the specification for perhaps the earliest example of modern online search, where you search the full text of documents on a remote computer. Lynn Chaitin did the programming. The remote computer was one of the behemoths custom-built for the SAGE nuclear warning system. Engelbart had arranged to use it through his funder, computing giant J.C.R. Licklider at ARPA.

The test worked perfectly, even allowing Boolean qualifiers like "and" and "or." Licklider himself was researching what would become his 1965 book Libraries of the Future, which predicted that by the year 2000 all literature would be online, and searchable, with the massive task of cataloguing eased by weak AI.

One early client was the CIA, for whom he evaluated a gigantic computerized system for automatically translating intercepted Russian documents into English (it wasn't quite ready). Others would include the Stanford University Libraries, UNESCO, the National Academy of Science, the Library of Congress, the National Agricultural Library, US Patent Office, and United Nations, and Central Intelligence Agency. Some of the early systems Charlie evaluated were fully computerized, but those handling images usually included an analog component such as microfilm. Computer memory was too expensive to make high quality graphics practical until the 1980s. Charlie was also active in professional organizations, serving as president of ASIS where he helped demonstrate Doug Engelbart's work to both computing and information science colleagues.

In 1971 he became a professor at the School of Librarianship and Information Studies at UCB (now the School of Information), while also directing the University's innovative Institute of Library Research. He oversaw seminal work in taking UC libraries card catalogs online. His 1980s book Technology in Support of Library Science and Information Service drew on those experiences.

Charlie retired from Dialog in 1992 and continued his consulting work while preparing a third book. A History of Online Information Services, 1963-1976, which he coauthored with Trudi Bellardo-Hahn, came out in 2003. It won the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Book-of-the-Year award. Charlie lives in Menlo Park.

The detailed Finding Aid to the Charles Bourne Collection is here. The contents of the collection range in date from 1947 to 2016, consisting of materials related to Bourne's pioneering career in the database and information retrieval industry, including his work at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), UC Berkeley, and Dialog Information Services. The collection contains Bourne's personal project files, which include papers, presentations, and other activities related to his professional work, including his book A History of Online Information Services, as well as the unpublished work Cost Analysis of Library Operations. The collection also holds Bourne's subject files on a range of topics, including organizations developing search systems, people working in the field, and database suppliers. These subject files contain technical reports, instruction manuals, internal reports, clippings, articles, correspondence, meeting notes, and some images and recordings. Additionally, there is a large collection of serials, conference proceedings, and books relevant to Bourne's computer and information science interests. The materials from a number of late 1950s and 1960s conferences on computerized search and browsing

Michael Buckland of the UC Berkeley School of Information is a leading information scientist who introduced Charlie Bourne to me, and suggested to Charlie that he offer his collection to CHM. Dr. Buckland served as an advisor on pre-computer "world brains" for the web gallery of our permanent exhibition Revolution, and is internationally known for his groundbreaking research into Emmanuel Goldberg of Zeiss-Ikon. Goldberg's actually-built 1920s microfilm "search engine" presaged the remarkably similar Memex concept of Vannevar Bush by over a decade.

The awkwardly titled Bourne The Ultimate Collection, brings together the (as of now) five-film Bourne franchise in one package on Ultra HD Blu-ray. This eleven-disc package includes the films on Ultra HD Blu-ray, standard Blu-ray, and Digital HD, but the collection is really just the five individually cased movies plus a bonus DVD. There are five Digital HD codes, one for each movie, and happily, they yield Vudu UHD versions that support Dolby Vision and Dolby Digital Plus. The lone Bonus Disc DVD insert appears to be exclusive to the set, though it's likely been included in some of the previous Bourne sets. Because most of the special of features in the set are relegated to the regular Blu-rays, this DVD likely contains features that had, in prior releases, been left on the DVDs and really is specific to Ultimatum and Legacy.

The box for the set is a strong cardboard sleeve, which in turn is encased with its own plastic slipcover. While the front has the quiet Bourne silhouette of the fifth film, on the back behind a detachable marketing slip, there is a fun flow chart featuring thumbnails of characters spanning the entire franchise. These thumbs are on the slipcover, and behind on the box, are the characters names in a directory structure.

Identity has its quirks, and it is the origin for both Bourne as a re-born, independent asset, and as a bad-ass. Why the handlers and other intelligence officers in charge never seem to grasp Bourne's desire to simply be left alone is now one of those plot points that defies common sense. (Or even more granular elements, such as an elite assassin that would carry around a printout of the target.)

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