The making of a new Steve Jobs biography reveals how Carnegie Mellon University's archival collections continue to inform new scholarship decades after the records were created.
by Shannon Riffe
When author Geoffrey Cain began researching “Steve Jobs in Exile,” a biography exploring the years between Steve Jobs' departure from Apple in 1985 and his return in 1997, he followed a trail that led to Carnegie Mellon University.
Among the collections he consulted were the papers of the late John Patrick Crecine, a 1961, 1963, and 1966 alumnus of Carnegie Mellon’s Graduate School of Industrial Administration (renamed the Tepper School of Business in 2004), who served as dean of Carnegie Mellon’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences as well as senior vice president and provost. While holding these roles, he played a central role in developing the Andrew Project, a distributed computing environment that connected computers across campus for the first time, and in shaping the future of academic computing. Crecine, who went on to become president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, served, from 1985-1996 as a member of the board of directors of NeXT Computer, the company Jobs founded after leaving Apple.
Preserved in the Carnegie Mellon University Archives, the Crecine collection contains correspondence, board materials, technical documentation, promotional materials and other records that offer a unique window into a formative period in computing history. The collection also documents NeXT's early efforts to market its computers to the academic market. In 1985, shortly after announcing NeXT, Jobs visited Carnegie Mellon to discuss the company's vision for a computer designed for higher education, touring campus computing facilities as NeXT gathered input from universities.
During his visit to the Archives, Cain examined materials ranging from board records to NeXT promotional ephemera, including a booklet featuring photographs and signatures of Steve Jobs and the company's executive leadership — one of the discoveries Emily Davis, collections archivist at Carnegie Mellon University Archives, remembers sparking particular excitement during his research. For Davis, every collection is preserved with the hope that one day the right person will come looking for it.
"Sometimes you're saving things for this hypothetical researcher," Davis said. "Then when that hypothetical researcher comes, you get excited."
In her role, Davis oversees the Archives' reference program, helping researchers from around the world discover and access materials that support their work. Some visitors arrive with a precise list of boxes they'd like to examine. Others begin with a broad question and rely on archivists to help identify collections, connect related materials and guide them toward additional resources.
"I basically go where researchers take me," Davis said. "Whatever their questions are, I'm trying to find the answers or connect them with collections they might not know about."
She often begins by asking researchers about what she calls their "white whale" — the elusive document or unanswered question that prompted their visit. Understanding what they're searching for helps her connect seemingly unrelated collections, recommend additional sources and point them toward materials they may not have known existed. That collaborative process is one of the less visible aspects of archival work, which includes hours, or years, processing collections, organizing records, creating detailed finding aids and preserving fragile materials so they remain accessible for future generations.
Even after years of preservation and processing, many archival collections remain largely unexplored until a researcher arrives with a new question.
"The zeitgeist changes," Davis said. "Things come back around as people begin re-examining them from a new perspective."
For years, the NeXT materials received relatively little attention, but renewed interest in Steve Jobs' years away from Apple brought Cain in to explore further.
While history textbooks and biographies focus on major achievements, primary sources provide a much closer look at the past. Letters, private messages, and working documents capture history in real time, revealing the behind-the-scenes struggles that shaped influential leaders and institutions.
"These are the raw ingredients that researchers are going to use to write history books," Davis said. "Newspaper articles, podcasts — all the ways we communicate and inform people are enhanced when they have primary sources behind them."
Three years after Cain's research visit, seeing the finished book in print brought that process full circle for Davis. "I love seeing the output from researchers after they visit us," she said. "Even though I was just a small part of their research process, it's really satisfying to see the finished work."
Main image: John Crecine delivered the introductory remarks when Steve Jobs visited Carnegie Mellon in 1985, shortly after announcing NeXT, to discuss the company's vision for a computer designed for higher education. The visit is documented in “The Tartan” student newspaper. Carnegie Mellon University Archives.