Carnegie Mellon Libraries: University Archives: Habermann Collection
Scope
and Content Notes
This collection contains the academic, professional and personal
papers of Arie Nicolaas (Nico) Habermann, Ph.D., stored in 9 record center boxes.
The collection includes publications, lecture materials, book translations, computer
program designs, teaching materials, and letters, E-mail printouts, contracts
and administrative reports regarding Habermann's myriad and interrelated academic,
corporate and scientific involvements.
The collection is arranged into ten series: Personal, Correspondence, Books, Papers,
Editorial, Teaching, External Relations, Consulting, Talks, and Trips.
Arrangement of the collection has sought to retain as much of Habermann's original
ordering as possible, while eliminating obvious filing error and circumstantial
lapses, such as occurred in the correspondence filing during the late years in
which his career was divided between Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the
National Science Foundation (NSF). In the refoldering process, material on individual
topics originally filed over time in several small folders have been combined
for cohesion. Folder titles reproduce important secretarial notes on Habermann's
use of folder contents; in many cases the notes were the only resources for a
records history.
Arrangement revisions of original order are recorded in the Records History or
Scope and Content Notes for individual series. Secretary Phyllis Pomerantz and
administrative assistant Sharon Burks (currently Carnegie Mellon employees) were
consulted on the method of original ordering, and their comments inform the series
documentation.
Due to the interrelation of Habermann's associations, the thickly interspersed
correspondence and the original ordering emphasis, the researcher is encouraged
to examine all series to locate topic-specific materials. A further incentive
is the existence of Habermann annotations and program design notes on unlikely
documents and on the backs of documents, a circumstance reflecting his busy lifestyle
and fecund mind.
Documentation of Habermann's educational methods and materials may be found in
the Teaching and Talks series. Record of Habermann's corporate, academic, computer
industry and computer science organization advisory career is contained in the
Consulting, Talks, and Trips series. For advisory-related work in securing and
implementing corporate and government funding of the Software Engineering Institute
(SEI) and other CMU Computer Science programs, see the External Relations, Consulting,
Teaching, Talks, and Trips series.
Habermann's writings and classroom or audience presentations on Ada and other
programming language and on the Gandalf program development system are divided
among the Books, Papers, Teaching, Talks, and Trips series. Further work in systems
and software design may also be found in the Papers, Talks, and Trips series.
For further details, consult the Records History and Scope and Content Notes for
each series.
According to secretarial custom, dictated by Habermann himself, letters and E-mail
pertaining to specific interests, events or activities are located in the file
folder pertaining to that topic, though some topic-specific correspondence was
filed as miscellaneous correspondence, an arrangement reproduced in the Correspondence
series. Within topic folders, correspondence has been rearranged into chronological
order from the secretarial reverse-chronological order. Paper-wrapped "bundles"
of correspondence represent multiple documents originally stapled together; due
to processing time constraints, these bundled documents have been left in reverse-chronological
order.
