History of Scientific (Scholarly) Information and Communication

Old volumes of chemical periodicals and textbooks

Also available via the blog of the author!

A Collection of Internet-Links

"And today the book is already, as the present mode of scholarly production demonstrates, an outdated mediation between two different filing systems. For everything that matters is to be found in the card box of the researcher who wrote it, and the scholar studying it assimilates it into his own card index." "Und schon heute ist das Buch, wie die aktuelle wissenschaftliche Produktionsweise lehrt, eine veraltete Vermittlung zwischen zwei verschiedenen Katalogsystemen. Denn alles Wesentliche findet sich im Zettelkasten des Forschers, der's verfasste, und der Gelehrte, der darin studiert, assimiliert es seiner eigenen Kartothek."

From: Walter Benjamin: Attested Auditor of Books (Vereidigter Bücherrevisor). In: One-Way-Street (Einbahnstrasse). 1928. Is included in: Walter Benjamin: Ein Lesebuch. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996, p. 93. English version cited in: Lloyd Spence: In the Body of the Text : Walter Benjamin and the Experience of Reading. July 30, 2000 Material Cultures of the Book. (via Archive.org)

General Issues

(If you know further links, please contact !)

Texts and timetables

Scholarly communication - historical development and new possibilities (Nancy Fjällbrant, IATUL-Proceedings 1997)
Chronology of Information Science after 1945 (Only in German: Zeittafel zur internationalen Entwicklung des Informationswesens nach 1945) - Heinz Marloth
Information and communication in history and in the present time (In German: Information und Kommunikation in Geschichte und Gegenwart by Margarete Rehm)
Le savoir et ses outils d'accès : repères historiques. (Only in French) - Sylvie Fayet-Scribe
Histoire de la normalisation autour du livre et du document: l'exemple de la notice bibliographique et catalographique. De la Bibliographie générale et raisonnée de la France (1791) à la Description bibliographique internationale normalisée (1975). Only in French - Sylvie Fayet-Scribe
Historical Aspects - Information Science. (In German) Rafael Capurro

Institutions

History of Scientific Information, Communication, and Documentation in Germany

(If you know further links, please contact !)

DGI-Arbeitskreis Geschichte des deutschen Informationswesens (DGI Working Group for the History of Information and Documentation in Germany)
Thomas Hapke: Hidden roots of mediating information - aspects of the German information movement. (Slides with spoken text at the Conference "European Modernism and the Information Society: Informing the Present, Understanding the past" in May 2005.)
Documentation and library associations in Germany during the 20th century (Slides of a talk by Marlies Ockenfeld)
Full text with the title "Libraries and Documentation in Germany: A Long-Lasting Conflict" by Marlies Ockenfeld and Hansjoachim Samulowitz (2004)
Bausteine zur Geschichte des deutschen Informationswesens im 20. Jahrhundert. (Building blocks for the history of German information science in the 20th century). Presentation at the annual meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Informationswissenschaft und Informationspraxis (DGI German Society for Information Science and Information Practice), May 2001.
In German: Ein Baustein zur Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Information und Kommunikation - eine Rezension und ein Literaturüberblick
English Paper: History of scholarly information and communication: A review of selected German literature.
Abstract (Journal of the American Society for Information Science)
Erich Pietsch - International Connections of a German Pioneer in Information Science, Slides of a talk, full text (2004)
Wilhelm Ostwald's activities to improve scholarly information and communication seen as part of the bibliographic movement in the first half of the 20th century. (Slides)
Wilhelm Ostwald, the Bridge, and Connections to other Bibliographic Activities at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (Paper at Pittsburgh 1998, Further Ostwald Links)
Bausteine zur Geschichte der Informationswissenschaft und -praxis in Deutschland (In German)
Not available anymore, only via Internet Archive Wayback Machine!
Ernst Meyer: Zur Geschichte der Dokumentation in der Chemie (On the history of documentation in Germany - in German)

Library History/Book History

(Only a few remarkable links)

Library History Round Table
Libraries Today
Library and Information History Group of CILIP
SHARP Web (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing)

History of Chemical Information

(If you know further links, please contact !)

Chronology of Chemical Information Science. also at!
Historical Information of ACS Division of Chemical Information (CINF)
Slides of a paper by Peter Willett, University of Sheffield, UK on "Chemoinformatics - A Historical View" at the symposium "Chemoinformatik - Ein Gebiet ist gereift" on November, 23 2001 in Erlangen
The Early History of Chemical Reviews (Mary Ellen Bowden)
History of the German chemical periodical "Die Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie" (In German)
Chemical Litera-Tour (Short texts in German with historical remarks):
- 1. Stage in Tour: Chemical Reference Works. Handbücher und Nachschlagewerke: Beilstein, Gmelin, Roempp & Co. (November 1990)
- 2. Stage in Tour: Chemical Textbooks. Chemische Lehrbücher von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis in unsere Zeit (Juni 1991)
- 3. Stage in Tour: Popular Chemical Literature. Wenn´s stinkt und kracht... - Facetten populärer Chemie-Literatur (November 1992)
- 4. Stage in Tour: On the History of Chemical Journals. Zur Geschichte chemische Zeitschriften
Historical Perspective [on chemical journals], paper by Arnold Thackray. In: Are Chemical Journals Too Expensive and Inaccessible?: A Workshop Summary to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable / Ned D. Heindel, Tina M. Masciangioli, and Eva von Schaper, Editors, National Research Council. Washington: National Academies Press, 2005.

History of the Internet/Computer History

(Only a few remarkable links)

History of the Internet (Internet Society)
Smithsonian Computer History
The Computer Museum History Center in Moffett Field, California.
Martin Campbell-Kelly at the History of Technology Professional Network Launch July 2002 on "The history of the history of computing"
Netizens: on the history and impact of Usenet and the Internet (by Michael and Ronda Hauben)
Homepage Thomas Haigh

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"And today the book is already, as the present mode of scholarly production demonstrates, an outdated mediation between two different filing systems. For everything that matters is to be found in the card box of the researcher who wrote it, and the scholar studying it assimilates it into his own card index."	"Und schon heute ist das Buch, wie die aktuelle wissenschaftliche Produktionsweise lehrt, eine veraltete Vermittlung zwischen zwei verschiedenen Katalogsystemen. Denn alles Wesentliche findet sich im Zettelkasten des Forschers, der's verfasste, und der Gelehrte, der darin studiert, assimiliert es seiner eigenen Kartothek."
From: Walter Benjamin: Attested Auditor of Books (Vereidigter Bücherrevisor). In: One-Way-Street (Einbahnstrasse). 1928. Is included in: Walter Benjamin: Ein Lesebuch. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996, p. 93. English version cited in: Lloyd Spence: In the Body of the Text : Walter Benjamin and the Experience of Reading. July 30, 2000 Material Cultures of the Book. (via Archive.org)