A look back to 2000 (part 1)

I was looking through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine the other day, trying to find an electronic copy of a printed document I have.  I wasn't able to find the document I wanted, but I did stumble upon a copy of the 1999-2000 ICPSR annual report.  This appears to have been published during the interregnum between Richard Rockwell and Myron Gutmann.  Myron took over as the Executive Director of ICPSR in 2001, and hired me in 2002 to lead the Computer and Network Services team.

As I read the report it occurred to me that some parts of it were just as relevant today as 10+ years ago.  In some cases the issues and observations are exactly the same; only the players and the technologies have changed.

I thought it might be interesting to compare excerpts from the Computer and Network Services section of that report, and compare them to today's ICPSR.  There's quite a bit of text in that old annual report, and I think it will make sense to break it down into smaller pieces for easier reading and commentary.

I also found a wonderful array of old photographs of my colleagues at ICPSR.  Some of them have left ICPSR, and some of them still work here today.  I'll include one of them in each of the follow-up posts too.  If you mouse over the picture, it should identify the person.