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The Cognitive Science and Machine Intelligence Laboratory (CSMIL) was established in 1985 as a joint venture with the School of Business, College of Engineering, and College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Gary Olson served as director from 1985 to 1994. Records detail the establishment of the laboratory and include committee minutes, financial records, announcements, and material on the colloquium series and various distinguished scientists invited to speak on artificial intelligence, spatial reasoning, and visualization of information.

The records consist of Topical Files, alphabetically arranged, which document various aspects of the Cognitive Science and Machine Intelligence Laboratory's administrative activities and research endeavors.

Within this series, Cognitive Science Course contains records pertaining courses which offered students a multidisciplinary approach to the study of cognition. These courses were proposed and offered between 1986 and 1988. Files contain correspondence, proposals, and course descriptions.

Colloquium Series contains programs, correspondence, and bulletins from colloquia sponsored and organized by the Cognitive Science and Machine Intelligence Laboratory.

The Newsletters series contains the CSMIL Bulletin, the main publication of the Cognitive Science and Machine Intelligence Laboratory, published biweekly. It provided a calendar of relevant events, colloquia, and workshops, as well as other announcements. Towards the late 1980s, the bulletin contained lengthier articles. This series also contains two editions of Express, a publication that updated the broader scientific community on the accomplishments of the EXPRES project, an electronic communication initiative.

Open Houses contains administrative documents, such as hand outs, to-do lists, and screen-shot print outs, relating to the CSMIL open houses.

Sloan Foundation contains records of the grant received to establish a program in Cognitive Science. The files include the final report to the Sloan Foundation on the project's development and activities.

Technical Reports include six spiral-bound versions of published reports co-authored by members of the Cognitive Science and Machine Intelligence Laboratory. The reports appeared in various journals, including Journal of Experimental Psychology, and the Journal on Expert Systems.