Foreword

Information and documentation centres in science, technology and medicine in the Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, have collaborated informally and formally for decades. At a personal level the sharing of common interests meant telephone calls, later e-mails, visits and meetings across the borders to discuss new developments and problems and to learn from each other. On a formal level Nordic funding and policy organizations like the Nordic Council for Scientific Information (NORDINFO) enabled joint actions and achievements of impressive results in online development.

This book presents glimpses of the exciting era of early development of online information retrieval (IR) systems and services in the Nordic countries. It covers the period from the 1960s to the ‘00s.

In the autumn of the year 2000 Elisabet Mickos visited Marie Wallin at the Royal Institute of Technology Library (KTHB) in Stockholm. Elisabet Mickos had just retired from the Finnish Technical Research Centre´s (VTT) Information Service and a final two year period at NORDINFO`s secretariat. Marie Wallin was packing for moving to new premises at the KTH campus. They felt nostalgic about the thought that so much of what they had experienced and enjoyed during their working life as information specialists was going to be forgotten and disappear forever in a never reopened archive. Why not try to revive the memories and write them down.

Many of the persons who participated in the development of online information retrieval services were academics or graduates in science and technology called information specialists or documentalists who provided researchers and other professionals with literature searches. Their experiences of this pioneering practical daily work would be interesting to record. The Nordic countries have participated significantly in the online development and in many cases been forerunners in Europe. It was possible thanks to persons who had enough foresight and determination to make information centres and libraries in our countries the earliest users of computer-based information systems. Their thoughts and memories would also be important to document when it was still possible. It was high time to compile this book.

NORDINFO was going to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2002. It seemed an appropriate occasion to acknowledge its central role in enabling collaboration and mutual stimulation in the field of scientific information retrieval. According to the practice in Nordic projects and activities this planned book of memories and stories of online development should be collected by representatives from all the Nordic countries working together on their interlaced history. It was easy to get Ulla Retlev from Denmark and Aud Lamvik from Norway to agree on joining the editorial team with Marie Wallin and Elisabet Mickos, the latter as project leader and main editor. Unfortunately no one from Iceland accepted the offer. NORDINFO approved a project plan from the group in April 2001 and Teodora Oker-Blom joined the team.

The aim of the book project was to gather authors from all the Nordic countries, either still working or retired, and ask them to give their personal views on the online history, if possible spiced with anecdotes to make it enjoyable to read. The aim was also to describe NORDINFO´s role in online development. We are very grateful to the authors who, without remuneration, accepted to contribute. The acceptance date of their texts is printed in the book. The task of the editorial team was e.g. to plan and co-ordinate the book project, to assist the authors of the chapters of their responsibility and to comment the manuscripts. Unfortunately NORDINFO, the financer of these tasks and the agreed publisher of the book, was discontinued in 2004.

Marie Wallin, Elisabet Mickos and Teodora Oker-Blom at the 13th Nord IoD conference in Stockholm, June 2007, posing in front of a poster informing about the book project.

The 13th Nordic Conference on Information and Documentation (13th Nord IoD) was held in Stockholm in June 2007. It gave the editorial team an opportunity to present a status report of this book project on Nordic online history. To acknowledge the authors who had submitted their manuscripts by then and to distribute examples of the contents of the book at the conference, available texts were posted online in the open digital repository Helda of the University of Helsinki. The manuscripts were left in the repository with the intention to replace them soon with the final version of the book.

Due to the very sad and sudden death of our project manager and main editor Elisabet Mickos in October 2007, to the discontinuation of NORDINFO and to other unfortunate circumstances the book project was paused and the incomplete example of the book was left pending for a decade in Helda.

At the beginning of 2016 the book project was revived in Finland as well as in Sweden. Lars Klasén, one of the authors, had been referring to the manuscripts in Helda in many of his lectures. He contacted us and wanted to make an effort to complete the publication. We are extremely thankful to him. Thanks to his ability, enthusiasm and gracious work for about two years we have managed to achieve the goal and present this book.

We hope that these glimpses of online history will trigger the memories of our colleagues and remind them of what we in the editorial team remembered as a challenging and pioneering period in Nordic online history. We also think that young people of today will enjoy glances into the past at a time when half of the population of the world is online this year 2018 according to the World Wide Web Foundation.

 Acknowledgements

We hereby want to thank all the authors for their patience to wait for this book to finally be published. We also want to honour the memory of the contributors who have passed away during this period.

This project would never have started without the support of many colleagues. Initially and through the years these information specialists have contributed to the project with anecdotes and photos to its mailing list and helped with e.g. electronic publishing.  We want to thank them. Very special thanks to Lars Klasén who revived the book project and put in a lot of work these last two years to achieve the goal; he can be said to be the actual motor of this book. We can not forget our respective families who supported the overtime of the editors and often helped with technical practicalities at home or even, as Lars Wallin, Marie’s husband, who helped to translate some chapters or parts thereof into English.

Marie Wallin and Teodora Oker-Blom

Stockholm and Helsinki 2018