Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Unicode Collection
M2864
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Title: Unicode collection
Identifier/Call Number: M2864
Physical Description:
73.25 Linear Feet
(140 manuscript boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1971-2020
Abstract: This collection primarily consists of
meeting notes, reports, minutes, agendas, research material, drafts, correspondence, and
other documents highlighting the development and output of the Unicode Standard, a universal
character encoding schema, and related internationalization standards by the Unicode
Technical Committee.
Language of Material:
English .
Series 4, Unicode Officers (Boxes 87-91), is closed until 2050. The rest of the collection
is open for research, with the exception of the born-digital materials, which are closed
until processed. Note that material must be requested at least 36 hours in advance of
intended use.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
This collection was given by Ken Whistler to Stanford University, Special Collections in
2021.
The collection was organized by the donor, Ken Whistler, and that arrangement has been
largely maintained. The following series are present in the collection, with some minor
overlap of materials between them: 1. Working Groups and Committees; 2. Joseph D. Becker; 3.
International Unicode Conference; 4. Unicode Officers; 5. Unicode Editorial; 6. Unicode
General; 7. Printed Material and Ephemera.
Unicode is an international encoding standard that allows consistent encoding,
representation, and handling of text expressed in many writing systems globally. It is
maintained by the Unicode Consortium, which operates the current version.
[identification of item], Unicode Collection (M2864). Dept. of Special Collections and
University Archives, Stanford Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Materials may be subject to copyright. While Special Collections is the owner of the
physical and digital items, permission to examine collection materials is not an
authorization to publish. These materials are made available for use in research, teaching,
and private study. Any transmission or reproduction beyond that allowed by fair use requires
permission from the owners of rights, heir(s) or assigns. See:
http://library.stanford.edu/spc/using-collections/permission-publish
The Unicode collection is comprised of personal notes,reports, meeting minutes, agendas,
editorial drafts, correspondence, conference proceedings, source material, publications, and
ephemera. These materials document the development of the Unicode Standard and related
activities of the Unicode Technical Committee from the 1980's into 2020.
The bulk of collection is comprised of documents from the early days of Unicode
(specifically 1984-1998), much of which has not been available online and which highlights
the evolution of Unicode Standard, beginning with the initial 1.0 version to its current
iteration.
The activities and output of the following working groups are prominently featured in the
collection:
Unicode Technical Committee, the technical committee of the Unicode Consortium responsible
for maintaining the Unicode Standard.
X3L2 (later referred to as L2), the technical committee of the InterNational Committee for
Information Technology Standards (INCITS) which deals with U.S. work on international
standards in the character encoding and internationalization subareas.
Working Group 2 (WG2), a working group that deals with the maintenance of ISO/IEC 10646,
the international multilingual character encoding standard maintained along with the Unicode
Standard.
Working Group 20 (WG20), a now-defunct working group that formerly handled
internationalization issues related to programming languages, including collation of
strings.
Also featured in the collection are editorial notes and drafts for various versions of the
Unicode standard, early notes and research files from Joseph D. Becker, a co-founder of
Unicode, documents from the Unicode Board of Directors and officer meetings, conference
proceedings from the International Unicode Conferences, as well as general correspondence,
printed material, and ephemera.
Later versions of some of these materials, as well as related documentation, can be found
on Unicode's website.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Unicode
Consortium
Unicode (Computer
character set)--Standards.
Unicode, Inc.
Correspondence.
Minutes.
conference proceedings