Stanford University has acquired a wide assortment of primary materials documenting the rise and operation of Silicon Valley. It should be noted that with a few exceptions listed below, the vast majority of this archival material is not online; researchers must still come to the University's Department of Special Collections to conduct their research. However, the sites listed below can provide a substantial amount of information useful in planning trips to the archive.
The Stanford University online library catalog is a good starting-point for researching the Library's holdings of published works, manuscripts, videotapes, and ephemera. Further detail about some of the manuscript collections is available through online finding aids, discussed below.
The home page for the department links to information about hours, services and policies, visitor access, etc.. Of special interest to researchers will be the online finding aids. Finding aids provide biographical information about the collection's subject (or in the case of institutional papers, a history of the institution), background regarding the history of a collection's acquisition and processing, access terms, and a catalog of a collection.
The subject listing divides the collection into various caregories, of which "History of Science and Technology" and "Stanford University" will probably be of greatest interest to students of Silicon Valley (though one should browse other categories as well). The title list is an alphabetical list of collection guides; there is also a page organized by collection number.
The Finding Aids are available in both SGML and HTML. The latter are accessible from the Online Archives of California project, which also has finding aids to many other archival collections of interest to historians of Silicon Valley, California industry and technology, and the history of science and technology.
The latest finding aid to go online is for the Apple Computer Inc. records.
Home page for the history of science and technology curators, containing general information and links.
Though not part of the Stanford Library, the online version of the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections is an invaluable resource for researchers.
The MouseSite is devoted to the work of Douglas Engelbart and his group at SRI in the 1960s, this site includes an archive with digitized versions of many technical reports, proposals, and other documents.
Transcripts of interviews conducted by Rob Walker with pioneers of the semiconductor industry. Interviews with Marcian (Ted) Hoff, Federico Faggin, Gordon Moore, Regis McKenna, and Lester Hogan are online; other interviews are stored in Special Collections.
Transcripts of interviews with Douglas Engelbart and Bruce Deal.
A tribute to the life and work of the late Xerox Parc Chief Technologist Mark Weiser. Most notable are several pages of testimonials and remembrances by family, colleagues, and friends.