Materials Research Society
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1973 |
1975 |
1980 |
now |
The Materials Research Society was founded in 1973. It is "an organization of materials researchers from academia, industry, and government that promotes communication for the advancement of interdisciplinary materials research to improve the quality of life". The Society now boasts more than 12,000 members and it has a well-organized website with much information about its current set-up and activities. The MRS Bulletin celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Society with a section in which former MRS presidents describe the Society's evolution (reproduced here).
In October 2002 we were preparing to present some of the MRS archive along with a more detailed history of the MRS and its impact upon the field. The plan was for what we call "differential access", meaning that documents would be more or less private and access depends upon one's status. The Materials Research Society would be put in charge of the status and thus control who has access to what. The following was Paris Lundis' preliminary diagram of the planned communication between the following units:
- MRS headquarters, just outside Pittsburgh, PA:
- document scanner (Tim Palucka is in charge here)
- Kathy D'Biagio, who will administer the MRS files on the hrst server
- MRS server
- Sandia Labs, New Mexico
- Gordon Pike, former MRS President, who will decide which documents should be private
- hrst headquarters, Dibner Institute, MIT, Cambridge, MA
- hrst server
Legend: Paris Lundis' preliminary sketch for file management, August 2002
In May 2003, Betsy Fleischer (editor of the MRS Bulletin), stated that this was merely a preliminary sketch that really does not reflect reality. At that stage the MRS were scanning documents at MRS headquarters (by Tim Palucka), and Gordon Pike was reviewing the documents to evaluate if they can be posted and what level of access is allowed, and then the actual posting was happening from headquarters (also by Tim Palucka).
But all these plans have been thrown out of kilter by the
discontinuation of the funding.
This page was last updated on 18 May 2002 by Arne Hessenbruch.
