The Association for Computing Machinery or ACM has announced it is making available all of its publications that date back to the 1950s till the end of 2000. Specifically, the publications date back to 1951, which makes for all that the organization published during the first fifty years of its existence. The digitized version of the published articles is now available to view and download on any device by anybody completely for free.

Together, that makes for a comprehensive collection of more than 117,500 articles covering almost all topics related to computing. The topics should be varied given that ACM happens to be the largest educational and scientific computing society in the world where educators, researchers, and professionals meet to discuss almost all aspects related to computing, be it sharing of related resources or promoting dialogue among members to address the various aspects and challenges facing the computing segment.

“We at ACM are especially proud to make this announcement now as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of our organization,” said ACM President Gabriel Kotsis. “ACM has published many of the foundational works by pioneers of the computing field, and we are delighted to share this treasure trove with the world. And in doing so, we take another large step in our evolution to become a fully open access publisher.”

Apart from published articles, ACM is also making available several other materials such as data sets, software, slides, audio recordings, and videos. This, the organization stated marks its first goal towards achieving open access status for all of its resources within the next five years.

The post World’s largest computing society open sources first years of its publications first appeared on Good e-Reader.