Bard Honored in Web Pioneer Ceremony

by Mary Lynn Rice-Lively

WNCG professor Bill Bard was honored at a ceremony on June 6, 2003 held to publicly recognize the "pioneers" of Web history at the University of Texas at Austin. On June 7, 1993, the 10 people honored in this ceremony were among those who helped to transform "Bongo" in to the first official University of Texas Web server. This web site was one of the first such 125 sites in the world.

The other staff members recognized for their role in this acheivement were:

• Mark McFarland, General Libraries
• David Cook, Information Technology Services
• John Wheat, Office of the Vice President for Resource Development
• Dennis Dillon, General Libraries
• Paul Rascoe, General Libraries
• Mary Lynn Rice-Lively, associate dean, School of Information
• Marg Knox, Information Technology Services
• Sue Phillips, General Libraries
• Mic Kaczmarczik, Information Technology Services

The contributions of other university "pioneers," as well as some who have moved on from the university to other institutions or companies, will be recognized in future celebrations, said Philip Doty, an associate professor in the School of Information and an organizer of the event.

Doty said the ceremony is in conjunction with the WWW@UT Project, an ongoing effort by the School of Information to create an online video oral history archive of narratives about the evolution of the World Wide Web at The University of Texas at Austin. Special emphasis is on collecting the stories of staff members who have been and continue to be integral to the success of the Web here at the university.

"This archive will be publicly available on the Web in a wide variety of accessible formats for use by future scholars in their study of this important development in human communication," Doty said.