In 1988 at the Belfer Lab and Archive at Syracuse University, we needed to find a way to care for and  provide access to one of the world's largest collections of recorded sound materials.

University funding on a per item basis was orders of magnitude less than that for the book holdings and most of the Belfer's holdings: cylinders, tapes, 78 rpm disks and LP records, required us to play them for the user. It was clear that some method of re-recording, preservation and distribution needed to be found. The result of that search was a project, using networked computers that worked and turned out to be way ahead of its time. What we learned we were able to demonstrate at SU and DEC World.

The first name for the project was DADS, for Distributed Audio Data Base. Then it changed to MOMS. Multimedia Object Management System. It ended up as TIMS, a Total Information Management System. Within a year the project had multiple corporate sponsors and cooperators among the finest institutions in the world. Many people contributed to the project but the main people were Ron Kalinoski, Arnold Paul, Bill Storm and myself.