Dr. Detlefsen’s office serves a dual purpose as the current home of her Museum of Antique Information Technology. An antique still functioning 1915 Underwood typewriter is propped up on wooden drawers containing glass slides on library instruction. A va riety of vinyl records, eight-track tapes, punch cards, rubber stamps, an electric stylus, an abacus and an Addiator are a sampling of items she has been collecting for the past ten years. Dr. Detlefsen’s interest in antique information technology started when her father gave her a slide rule. Over the years, retiring colleagues and interested friends have given her everything from an early modem that required the user to actually dial the telephone to make a connection and insert the handset into the modem, to one of the first terminals capable of an OCLC hook-up. Dr. Detlefsen is also very interested in establishing a more permanent and appropriate site for her collection.
Librarians are not the only people interested in this collection. KDKA, the local CBS affiliate, and the Tribune Review have interviewed Dr. Detlefsen all in the past two weeks. The New York Times ran an article on the history of sound technology on Jul y 21st and another on the evolution of the calculator on September 1 of this year. Her interest in information technology’s past is on today’s cutting edge. Dr. Detlefsen is tireless in her pursuit of new items and is trying to locate the following:
A display case outside her office on the 6th floor contains two shelves of realia worth viewing and trying to identify. The next time your parents or grandparents threaten to toss out that old record player, remember it’s part of our professional past, a nd there’s home for it among old friends in Dr. Detlefsen’s office.