%0 Journal Article
%T Collaboration and mediation: a guide to the creation of the Stephen Hawking Archive
%A Katrina Dean
%A Susan Gordon
%D 2024
%V 
%N Spring 2024
%K amanuenses
%K assistive communications technology
%K born-digital archives
%K Cambridge University Library
%K recording media
%K scientific authorship
%K scientific collaboration
%K Stephen Hawking Archive
%X In this paper we discuss the creation of the Stephen Hawking Archive through processes of collaboration, and human and technological mediation.[1] We focus on the production of documents including scientific and popular writings, correspondence and lectures in different media and forms of communication from handwriting, diagrams and typing to word processing and digital communication. We consider these processes to think about what is important in the Stephen Hawking Archive, including where authorship is located, and what this shows about scientific collaboration and communication in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. We also briefly consider how archivists have mediated the Archive since it was received by Cambridge University Library (CUL) in 2021 through its arrangement and description, and we look forward to developing the Archive in the future, including the possibility of acquiring further digital files to include in the Archive.
    
    
        
            
        
    
%Z In this paper we use the following definition of mediation: ‘Agency or action as an intermediary; the state or fact of serving as an intermediate agent, a means of action, or a medium of transmission; instrumentality.’ ‘Mediation, N., Sense 2.a.’ Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford UP), March 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1027790996.
%Z From the notes, it appears that Mialet’s interviews with informants including librarians and manuscripts curators concluded in 2007.
%Z A broader context for and analysis of social activism among scientists in the period that Hawking was a graduate and postdoctoral researcher is provided by Jon Agar (2008).
%Z Cambridge University Library (CUL), Stephen Hawking Archive (SHA), MS Add. 10440/1/3
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/18
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/16
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/16/6
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/18/7. A photostatic copy of the typescript of this essay with autograph corrections and insertions was sold for a hammer price of £30,000 at an online auction at Christie’s (2018), which is also where the estate’s intention to gift Hawking’s archive to the nation through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme was announced. 
%Z Letter from T G Green, University Marshal, to S W Hawking advising Hawking of his award, 17 May 1967, CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/1/13/1.  For more on Hawking’s Adam’s Prize essay and its relationship to a later collaboration with George Ellis on The Large Scale Structure of Space Time, discussed below, see Ellis (2014).
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/3/2
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/18/23/1
%Z Cambridge University Library, CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/18/14. A copy of this diagram from the published paper is shown in Wright (2014) p 101, Fig 2.
%Z Correspondence with George Ellis, CUL, SHA, MS Add. 10440/3/5.
%Z Letters from Stephen Hawking to George Ellis, 23 June 1972 and 26 July [1972], CUL MS Add. 10440/3/5.
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add. 10440/18/22
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add. 10440/3/5
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/22/2
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/3/7
%Z Stephen Hawking to Professor E P Aksenov (draft), undated, CUL, SHA, MS Add. 10440/5/3.
%Z Stephen Hawking to the Editor of Nature, 15 January 1974, CUL, SHA, MS Add. 10440/6/3/2.
%Z The division of Hawking’s time between the Institute of Astronomy (formerly Theoretical Astronomy) and DAMTP is discussed in Seife (2021, p 310).
%Z Sales brochure for Possum Controls Limited, CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/13/5.
%Z Letter from Stephen Hawking to Miss Wakefield, Possum Controls Limited, 17 May 1973, CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/13/5.
%Z Letter from Stephen Hawking to Miss Wakefield, 17 May 1973, CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/13/5. 
%Z Letter from Stephen Hawking to Possum Controls Limited, 27 August 1975, CUL, SHA, MS Add/10440/13/5.
%Z Letter from Stephen Hawking to P Waters, Possum Controls Limited, 23 December 1975, CUL, SHA, MS Add/10440/13/5.
%Z Letter from Judy Fella to Possum Controls Limited, 7 January 1977, CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/13/5.
%Z Letter from Stephen Hawking to Matthew Johnson, 11 November 1975, CUL, SHA, MS Add. 10440/12/6. 
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add. 10440/2/3/3
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add. 10440/22/4
%Z Information printed on thermal fax paper is vulnerable to loss. Although the text of most documents on fax paper in the Archive has noticeably faded, none have yet become unreadable. Stable copies of documents on thermal fax paper will be created for preservation purposes.
%Z Examples include a facsimile to Errol Morris, director of A Brief History of Time The Film, 21 January 1991, regarding the schedule of the project; and a comment written in response to a fax from Gordon Freeman dated 25 March 1993 regarding the script for Hawking’s appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation. There is also an increase in correspondence related to popular projects being directed at Hawking’s personal or graduate assistants, instead of being addressed to Hawking himself.
%Z Letter from Paul Cartledge to Stephen Hawking, 29 April 2000, CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/13/5.
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/19/64
%Z S W Hawking, address to a press conference, possibly at the University of California, Berkeley, 1988. CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/19/65
%Z S W Hawking, address to a press conference, possibly at the University of California, Berkeley, 1988. CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/19/65 
%Z S W Hawking, address to a press conference, possibly at the University of California, Berkeley, 1988. CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/19/65. When upgraded to the new version (5010) in 1988 Hawking did not like the voice as much and also preferred to retain this facility to make calls and so chips in the 5010 board were replaced with firmware from the 5000 (Wozniak, 2019, p 6).
%Z Letter from John Polkinghorne to R A (Bob) Nind, 7 November 1977, CUL, SHA, MS Add. 10440/1/9.
%Z Stephen Hawking to [the fourth] Lord Cochrane of Cults, 4 February 1980, CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/13/1.
%Z CUL, SHA, MS Add. 10440/13/8
%Z Letter from Stephen Hawking to the Managing Director of Commodore Information Centre, 27 February 1981, CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/13/9.
%Z Stephen Hawking to Sir Clive Sinclair, 2 February 1988, CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/2/2/4.
%Z Stephen Hawking, Equipment 2018, personal communication from Jonathan Wood, 22 July 2023.
%Z Entry for 28 April 2009, graduate assistant’s notebook, CUL, SHA, MS Add.10440/2/4/7/4.
%I The Science Museum Group
%@ 2054-5770
%B eng
%U https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/collaboration-and-mediation-a-guide-to-the-creation-of-the-stephen-hawking-archive/
%J Science Museum Group Journal