Roger Summit

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Dr. Roger K. Summit is the founder and chairman emeritus of Dialog.

An expert in information systems design, Dr. Summit conducted pioneering work beginning in 1962 while at the Lockheed Corporation that led to the creation of Dialog, the first-of-its-kind online information retrival system. He has since held respected positions at Dialog and on national and international advisory boards and in professional associations, and has received numerous honors. Dr. Summit has puiblished over 100 papers and journal articles basond on his knowledge of and experience with online information services.

Under Dr. Summit's direction, various versions of Dialog called RECON were installed in the 1960s for such government agencies as NASA, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commisssion and the European Space Agency. Dialog is associated with several "firsts" in information retrieval milestones:

• The first national network of terminals involving a large-scale database in 1967, via several NASA facilities accessing the NASA database of 400,000 aerospace citations.

• The first trans-European information retrieval network in 1969 operated by the European Space Research Organization.
• The first extensive nationwide application of a non-defense related online information retrieval service in 1969 offering the ERIC database (educational materials) to teachers and researchers via several centers around the country.

1972 - Dialog was established as a commercial information retrieval business within the Lockheed Palo Alto Resaerch Laboratory.

1982 - the company spun-off as a wholly owned subsidiary, with Dr. Summit as president.

1988 - Dr. Summit participated in the successful sale of Dialog to Knight-Ridder, Inc.

1990 - Dr. Summit named president of Knight-Ridder's newly created Electronic Publishing Group.

Dr. Summit has a scholarship named in his honor -- the Roger K. Summit International Scholarship.

Click here for the complete text of Dr. Summit's bio, (“Professional Biography of Dr. Roger K. Summit, Chairman Emeritus, Dialog,�? PDF).

See also "Reflections on the Beginnings of Dialog, The Birth of Online Information Access"