The IS History Initiative: Continued Efforts and Results

Abstract

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Editorial: The History and Philosophy Department

“…Following a series of historical studies that included a book chapter (Hirschheim & Klein, 2011), two special issues on history in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems and the Journal of Information Technology, with several of these papers (Hirschheim & Klein, 2012;Porra, Hirschheim, & Parks, 2014) receiving best paper awards, the AIS history task force mapped out a detailed strategy to accomplish the goals of the IS history initiative. After the AIS established the IS history initiative, Zhang (2015Zhang ( , 2016 conducted extensive work that included organizing numerous panels on IS history held at ICIS, ECIS, AMCIS, and PACIS conferences, setting up of the technological infrastructure, managing the conference tracks on IS history, creating a Mendeley group on IS History, and interviewing (with the help of other scholars) pioneers in the field such as Gordon Davis, Bill King, Eph McLean. Despite such encouraging developments, the IS field faces considerable challenges in its endeavors to establish a historical tradition.…”

“…The perspective of IS history in this department continues the efforts of the Association for Information System (AIS) historian Ping Zhang to accomplish the goals of the IS history initiative: 1) to collect, represent, and preserve the IS field's history; 2) to interpret, write, disseminate, and review the IS field's history; and 3) to discover/identify IS genealogy, roots, sources, and facets that deserve to be examined from a historical point of view (Zhang, 2015(Zhang, , 2016. These goals, together with several other recent deliberations on the importance of focusing on IS history (Bryant, Black, Land, & Porra, 2013;Hirschheim & Klein, 2011Hirschheim, Saunders, & Straub, 2012;Land, 2010Land, , 2015Straub, 2015), emphasize the sense of urgency for the field to engage in this effort.…”