Computer Literacy Bookshops oral history
This oral history covers the origins and development of the Computer Literacy Bookshops, an innovative and influential series of bookstores in the heart of Silicon Valley. The brainchild of Dan Doernberg and Rachel Unkefer, the first store opened in March, 1983 and soon became the most comprehensive computer and electronics bookstore in the world. As such, it became a critical resource for the Valley’s thousands of computer scientists and engineers seeking information on the latest technologies, many of which would then be implemented immediately by these technical customers into upcoming products. With the arrival of electronic communications like email in the early 1990s, the store complemented its in-store and telephone order processing with electronic orders, anticipating Amazon by several years. At its peak, there were four stores and a mailing list of approximately 100,000 customers. While the stores closed in 2001 (Dan and Rachel sold the company in 1997), for so many people, at all levels of technical knowledge, the Computer Literacy Bookshops were a library, a meeting place, and a temple to the new technologies that were to define the world to come.
Item Details
- Date
- 2021-03-26 (Made)
- Type
- Document
- Catalogue number
- 102792172
- Organization
- Computer History Museum (Publisher)
- People
- Rachel Unkefer (Interviewee)
Daniel A. Doernberg (Interviewee)
Dag Spicer (Interviewer) - Category
- Transcript
- Format
- Credit line
- Computer History Museum
- Extent
- 65 p.
- Language
- English
- Acquisition number
- X9445.2021
- Subject
- Stanford University, Silicon Valley, PLATO, Amazon
- Archive collection
- CHM Oral History collection
- Archive hierarchy
- Oral History collection