Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship (IRIS) Records (OF.1ZCO.1)

Administrative History

Brown University established the Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship (IRIS), to explore new uses of computing technology in research, teaching and learning. To address the needs of today's "idea workers," IRIS worked to develop a rich set of experimental tools that provide people with new ways to create, retrieve and organize information.

The Institute's most important accomplishment was the creation of Intermedia, an advanced hypertext system. The work of the project was funded by a grant from Annenberg/CPB. The project's main purpose was to design a set of computer-based tools that would enable instructors to create software for teaching and research, and then have students use these tools as a supplement to their other coursework. The project was tested and assessed in three undergraduate courses at Brown University: Biology 106, English 32, and Music 40.

IRIS was founded by Andries van Dam, William S. Shipp, and Norman Meyrowitz in August 1983 and closed its doors in June 1994. Shipp, the founding director, retired in 1990, and between 1990 and 1992 Meyrowitz and Martin J. Michel served as co-directors. From 1992 to its close, Paul Kahn directed the Institute.