ANNOUNCE Dynamica Digital Archive (1975- 1984)

[System Dynamics Society <sds@]

Posted by System Dynamics Society <sds@csc.albany.edu>

There is a new section of the System Dynamics Society web-site that includes digitised versions of all the papers published in the journal Dynamica, the precursor to the Society's journal, the System Dynamics Review. At an informal meeting at the 2005 Boston conference of the three presidents (Immediate Past President, President Elect, and myself as the then serving President), it was recognised that Dynamica comprised an important repository of early System Dynamics papers. Most people know someone who knows someone with a set of issues, and copies of all issues were lodged with the British libraries of record, but it was decided that all Society members and researchers in the field should be able to access easily the full set. That facility is now in place, and goes a long way to completing the 'digital paper trail' of System Dynamics research and publication.

Dynamica essentially started as a house journal for the System Dynamics Group at Bradford University, initially publishing work by Bradford people, visitors to the group, research collaborators and other professional acquaintances, but soon started attracting submissions from people outside this network. This demonstrated the need for a dedicated, open access journal, which Dynamica quickly became. It was a critical move that it should morph into the System Dynamics Review as the official journal of the Society when it was formed in the 1980s.

In its time, Dynamica published a number of important papers and eventually was taken by quite a wide international subscribership; it is important and timely that these are now available in their full, original versions to all researchers and practitioners.

It is very important that we acknowledge the contribution of the editors and supporters who worked to develop the original journal, to the University of Bradford for encouraging and underwriting the venture. It is equally important that we appreciate all those who have volunteered much of time to the digitisation project. Finally, we must be grateful to the University of Bradford, as copyright holder, for the generosity in permitting us to make access to this valuable literature base freely available through our web-site.

Graham W. Winch
Founding Editor, Dynamica
Executive Editor, System Dynamics Review (1995-2001) Posted by System Dynamics Society <sds@csc.albany.edu> posting date Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:29:57 -0400 (EDT) _______________________________________________

[Bob Eberlein <bob@vensim.com&]

Posted by Bob Eberlein <bob@vensim.com>

This is wonderful news about Dynamica. That, along with D-memo's, some conferenc proceedings and of course back issues of the System Dynamics Review give us a very significant archive of historic work in the field.
With the help of technology, much of this work is more accessible now than when it was written.

Of course to get things in a format that allows them to be accessed does take some work, and has been a significant team effort. I would just like to add to Graham's note special thanks to Deborah Andersen for helping to intiate this process, John Sterman and John Morecroft whoe were willing to provide their cherished copies of the original journals for scanning, Laura Taranto who did the scanning and even returned John and John their originals, Niyousha Hosseinichimeh who typed in the abstracts to provide searchable text and Navid Ghaffarzadegan who has been setting up the web site and pulling the pieces together.

Bob Eberlein



Posted by Bob Eberlein <bob@vensim.com> posting date Sat, 13 Jul 2007 10:29:57 -0400 (EDT) _______________________________________________