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I am not surprised about the effort it took to find a copy of Ritchie's dissertation. Dissertations tend to be difficult to find if they are not already listed

I am not surprised about the effort it took to find a copy of Ritchie's dissertation. Dissertations tend to be difficult to find if they are not already listed on WorldCat or in ProQuest. But the museum used the best method in this case: talk to people close to people who had a copy at one point. In my experience when all else fails, this strategy is the primary one that ends up working. It doesn't work all the time, and I still am looking for a few "ancient" technical reports despite some sustained effort on my part, but I have been able to find several documents/reports just by asking the right people. Does anybody else have similar experiences? I'm interested if there are other avenues that somebody could try as well.

mercer 6y ago
Out of curiosity: what 'ancient' technical reports are you looking for (plus who knows someone here might know something)?
- atrettel 6y ago
  The only ancient technical report that I am looking for currently is Mark Morkovin's 1960 AGARD conference paper titled "The structure of supersonic turbulent boundary layers". This was presented at the April 1960 Boundary Layer Research Meeting of the NATO AGARD Wind Tunnel and Model Testing Panel in London. I have tried contacting many different people about this without any success. Morkovin died in 2015 around the time I learned about the paper. His family has never responded to my correspondence and I do not believe they have a copy. The one professor who did have a copy of it threw out his collection of papers a few years before I asked him. Morkovin was a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and they do not have it in their archives. Morkovin likely wrote the paper while working for the Martin Company (now merged into Lockheed Martin). It is likely that the paper was also filed as a Martin Company research report, but I later learned that Lockheed Martin has no copies of the Martin Company research report series since the Martin Company apparently destroyed the paper copies intentionally before the merger (I have no detail past that). NATO published other papers from this conference but not this one. They may have a copy but they have never replied to my correspondence. I do know of a professor looking for a copy of this paper, but he has also not found it either. It would be nice to find a copy, but it's not a high priority for me.
  - zymhan 6y ago
    Maybe check with https://twitter.com/ColdWarScience https://twitter.com/ColdWarScience, she's a historian and editor, specializing in the Cold War era of course
  - dpq 6y ago
    Fascinating and sad. I'd like to tell a similar story with a happier ending. I was looking for the first volume of JH Schroeter's observations of Mercury (published in 1788!) when I was writing my own PhD, and found it thanks to contacting a group of fans who were working on restoring and collecting his heritage in the Lilienthal observatory. All of my previous efforts had failed, but I learned my lesson here: if you want something hard to get, look for people who might be obsessed with the subject.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- btrettel 6y ago
  Some people like myself and gwern have lists of papers that we're looking for: http://trettel.org/papers-to-find.html http://trettel.org/papers-to-find.html https://www.gwern.net/Fulltext https://www.gwern.net/Fulltext
closeparen 6y ago
>Dissertations tend to be difficult to find if they are not already listed on WorldCat or in ProQuest My university library has a dissertation office with a copy of every one of them back to 1931. You may not be able to find them online, but you certainly can if you go in person during business hours. Is that unusual?
- atrettel 6y ago
  No, that is fairy common, as far as I know. The only issue with that is that some universities will not lend out dissertations via interlibrary loan. In those cases, the only way to read a dissertation is to visit the university. This is a big problem for foreign dissertations, since it makes it extremely difficult to access the research.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  Ritchie's dissertation would have been held in such a library if he submitted it. The article states that he did not.

mercer 6y ago

Out of curiosity: what 'ancient' technical reports are you looking for (plus who knows someone here might know something)?

atrettel 6y ago
The only ancient technical report that I am looking for currently is Mark Morkovin's 1960 AGARD conference paper titled "The structure of supersonic turbulent boundary layers". This was presented at the April 1960 Boundary Layer Research Meeting of the NATO AGARD Wind Tunnel and Model Testing Panel in London. I have tried contacting many different people about this without any success. Morkovin died in 2015 around the time I learned about the paper. His family has never responded to my correspondence and I do not believe they have a copy. The one professor who did have a copy of it threw out his collection of papers a few years before I asked him. Morkovin was a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and they do not have it in their archives. Morkovin likely wrote the paper while working for the Martin Company (now merged into Lockheed Martin). It is likely that the paper was also filed as a Martin Company research report, but I later learned that Lockheed Martin has no copies of the Martin Company research report series since the Martin Company apparently destroyed the paper copies intentionally before the merger (I have no detail past that). NATO published other papers from this conference but not this one. They may have a copy but they have never replied to my correspondence. I do know of a professor looking for a copy of this paper, but he has also not found it either. It would be nice to find a copy, but it's not a high priority for me.
- zymhan 6y ago
  Maybe check with https://twitter.com/ColdWarScience https://twitter.com/ColdWarScience, she's a historian and editor, specializing in the Cold War era of course
- dpq 6y ago
  Fascinating and sad. I'd like to tell a similar story with a happier ending. I was looking for the first volume of JH Schroeter's observations of Mercury (published in 1788!) when I was writing my own PhD, and found it thanks to contacting a group of fans who were working on restoring and collecting his heritage in the Lilienthal observatory. All of my previous efforts had failed, but I learned my lesson here: if you want something hard to get, look for people who might be obsessed with the subject.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
btrettel 6y ago
Some people like myself and gwern have lists of papers that we're looking for: http://trettel.org/papers-to-find.html http://trettel.org/papers-to-find.html https://www.gwern.net/Fulltext https://www.gwern.net/Fulltext

closeparen 6y ago

>Dissertations tend to be difficult to find if they are not already listed on WorldCat or in ProQuest My university library has a dissertation office with a copy of every one of them back to 1931. You may not be able to find them online, but you certainly can if you go in person during business hours. Is that unusual?

atrettel 6y ago
No, that is fairy common, as far as I know. The only issue with that is that some universities will not lend out dissertations via interlibrary loan. In those cases, the only way to read a dissertation is to visit the university. This is a big problem for foreign dissertations, since it makes it extremely difficult to access the research.
globular-toast 6y ago
Ritchie's dissertation would have been held in such a library if he submitted it. The article states that he did not.