Document Center

Belmont, CA. August 28, 2006:

Ms Claudia Bach, President of Document Center Inc., became a Fellow of the Standards Engineering Society at an Awards Luncheon during the organization's annual convention on August 14, 2006. The presentation represents the association's acknowledgement of professional distinction and accomplishment in the field of standardization.

The award committee conferred the grade of Fellow upon Ms. Bach "...in recognition of her dedication, leadership, and valuable contributions to the principles and practices of standardization."

Ms. Bach has owned Document Center Inc. since January 1985. During that time, she has presided over the development of Document Center from an idea in a garage into an internationally respected standards distribution service.

The company pioneered the use of the Internet, and particularly the web, for the distribution of standards and standards information. With it's first website (www.doccenter.com) in 1993, the company influenced information organizations as diverse as Dialog and Information Express to Standards bodies such as ISO (the International Standards Organization) and ANSI (the American National Standards Institute).

The site was the first to make use of the Mosaic browser and the WAIS search engine to provide an interactive catalog of information products for sale. Marc Andreessen highlighted the site on the NCSA "What's New" page in October 1993. Document Center is a hard copy document delivery service specializing in government and industry specifications and standards. Document Center has the complete Department of Defense (DoD) Index of Specifications and Standards collection available, as well as the complete collection of the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM). The Center also has additional industry (ANSI, SAE, IPC, IEEE, EIA) and govenment (NASA, DLA, FAA) documentation at its Silicon Valley location. Note from Marc: "this is a great technology demo of advanced Mosaic/WAIS features, including Mosaic 2.0's fill-out forms — check it out!"

The Ziff Davis publication PC Computing magazine included Document Center as one of the approximately 400 sites on it's "Road Map to the Internet" in September, 1994. Forbes magazine highlighted the company in it's February 27, 1995 ASAP supplement as one of "three companies with stakes in the Net biz game...", they quoted, "Claudia Bach...says she would have had to be 'brain-dead' not to put her company on the World Wide Web."

Document Center was assisted by Marc Fleischmann, then at EIT in Palo Alto, in setting up the site. Fleischmann and the others at EIT felt that the Internet was a kind of "Field of Dreams — build it and they will come." Bach felt differently.

Thanks to the ANSI SDSC, Standards and Data Services Committee, there was a forum for advocacy of the new technology as early as 1993. Ms. Bach played an active and pivotal role in educating the standards community about the benefits and technology involved in getting Standards and Standards information on the Internet. Her demonstrations, many training sessions, and speaking tours during this time in the U.S. and abroad made the adoption of the technology move ahead in a significant way.

Additionally, Ms. Bach has chaired the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Engineering Division's Standards Committee, hosting the Standards Roundtable and the various sessions during those three years. She has a continuing column in Intercom, the Journal of the Society for Technical Communication. And she has been a speaker at the SES and the SLA Annual Conferences.

"There is no finer reward than the recognition of one's contribution by one's peers," said Ms. Bach. "Becoming a Fellow of the Standards Engineering Society is a real honor. I am delighted with the recognition of our accomplishments by SES and the Standards community."

About SES — The Standards Engineering Society

SES was founded in 1947 as a non-profit, technical association dedicated to furthering the knowledge and use of standards and standardization. SES is unique in that it is the only organization in North America committed exclusively to furthering public awareness and knowledge of standards and standardization. SES provides a neutral forum where standards users and developers can come together to address mutual issues, opportunities, and interests in ways that work to the benefit of everyone involved with, or affected by, standards.

The Society's members are standards developers, users, managers, and information specialists from industry, government, standards developing organizations, trade associations, and academia.