The Robert (Bob) Bemer papers consist of materials created over the course of Bemer's career in various software and management positions at IBM, Rand Corporation, General Electric, and Honeywell, Inc. The collection represents his work related to programming and code standards, text processing and the Y2K problem, and spans from 1943 to 2002, with the bulk of the collection ranging from 1955 to 1999. Materials related to the Y2K problem consist of several public relations files Bemer kept where he either appeared in interviews or was mentioned in articles concerned with what is variously called the Y2K problem or millennium bug. There is also some correspondence and a collection of web publications written by other experts, as well as one folder on a Y2K conference held in Washington, DC in 1998. Much of the collection's remaining content concerns Bemer's activities related to programming standards such as ASCII, COBOL and FORTRAN, as well as his work with character sets, text processing, printer technology and OCR. These materials are made up of technical papers, specifications, manuals, correspondence, memoranda, meeting minutes, and conference proceedings. Some of these folders also contain activities and histories in computing (what Bemer deemed "vignettes") that were contemporary to Bemer's work, but which he may not have been directly involved with.