Roger Kent Summit
born October 14, 1930 Detroit, Michigan
grew up in Dearborn
parents both teachers; father a teacher/guidance counselor who played piano and organ for silent movies
brother is a psychiatrist
married 1964 to Ginger - Virginia M. Summit, active in Los Altos Hills, California City Council
daughter Jennifer is Professor of English, Stanford University
son Scott is CTO of Bespoke Innovations, a medical device company
Stanford University, BA in psychology 1952, MBA 1957, PhD in management science 1965
his work in information retrieval began when he took a summer job at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in 1960
responsible for design and development in 1966 of the world's first large-scale, computer-based interactive information retrieval system
Dialog, the pioneering information retrieval company that Roger founded, was recognized in May 2019 as an IEEE Milestone. For context, fewer than 200 IEEE Milestones have been named, among them fiber optics, the computer chip, bullet trains, Moore's Law, flash memory, the bar code, and the atomic clock.
plays piano, horn, and trombone; is in two big band jazz orchestras in the Bay Area, the Daddios and the Leratones
A New Professionalism
Summit: My third idea on shaping the emerging online industry is that I think online created a new profession of librarians. Ardito: Can you say a little bit more about the new librarians? Do you mean that online created a different profession or a specialized segment of it? Summit: Or was it just a tool? Online provided a tool to the research librarian. That'a term I use a lot, as opposed to "information specialist." I just talk about "research librarians" and people seem to understand that that's something beyond the custodial librarian. So considering the profession of research librarianship, Dialog gave the research librarian a new tool. You could say that it's just a new tool, the this person was doing research before, using manual tools, and then this computer comes along, so you get a computer tool, but it's still a research librarian. It is a question of when a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. I think that the combination of the computer and the massive databases really represents a difference in kind, in terms of what the profession can do and what the professional librarian can do. Bjorner: In many ways, I think, because it's more active, rather than being passive, it also opens up beyond the specialties. When you're a librarian with books or with printed materials, you're very often focusing on a certain subject area as an individual. But having the world of information at your fingertips makes you think in a different way, too. Summit: Yes, and there is a skill associated with it. It's a different skill that needs to be learned. It is an extension of other skills in terms of the interpersonal, in terms of a more expressive ability. I think we've created a different professionalism within librarianship. When we started seeing in job postings Dialog searching ability as one of the requirements, we thought that online had arrived. And we saw that people putting out their resumes would state experience in searching Dialog. -- from "Online Before the Internet, Part 4: Early Pioneers Tell Their Stories: Roger Summit"
Online Before the Internet: Early Pioneers Tell Their Stories
Roger Summit recalls early days of Dialog