Proceedings of the 1998 Conference on the History and Heritage of Science Information Systems Generously Supported By: The Chemical Heritage Foundation The Eugene Garfield Foundation The National Science Foundation (Grant #IIS-9814034) Proceedings of the 1998 Conference on the History and Heritage of Science Information Systems Edited by Mary Ellen Bowden Trudi Bellardo Hahn Robert V. Williams ASIS Monograph Series Published for the American Society for Information Science and the Chemical Heritage Foundation by Medford, NJ 1999 Copyright © 1999 by the American Society for Information Science. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher, Information Today, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. Published by Information Today, Inc. 143 Old Marlton Pike Medford, NJ 08055-8750 Distributed in Europe by Learned Information Europe, Ltd. Woodside, Hinksey Hill Oxford OX1 5BE England To contact CHF write Chemical Heritage Foundation 315 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19106-2702, USA Fax: (215) 925-1954 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Conference on the History and Heritage of Science Information Systems (1998 : Pittsburgh) Proceedings of the 1998 Conference on the History and Heritage of Science Information Systems / edited by Mary Ellen Bowden, Trudi Bellardo Hahn and Robert V. Williams. p. cm. — (ASIS monograph series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57387-080-3 (pbk.) 1. Information storage and retrieval systems—Science—History Congresses. 2. Information storage and retrieval systems— Bibliography—History Congresses. I. Bowden, Mary Ellen. II. Bellardo, Trudi. III. Williams, Robert Virgil, 1938– . IV. Title. V. Series. Z699.5.S3C64 1998 025.06′5—dc21 99-36330 CIP The opinions expressed by the contributors to this book do not necessarily reflect the position or the official policy of the American Society for Information Science or the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Cover design: Jacqueline Walter To the pioneers of science information Contents Foreword viii Preface ix Acknowledgments x Contributors xi History and Historiography of Science Information Systems Overview of the History of Science Information Systems3 Michael Buckland Funding a Revolution8 Thomas P. Hughes Fax to Facts: Cold Fusion and the History of Science Information14 Bruce V. Lewenstein Shaping Biomedicine as an Information Science27 Timothy Lenoir Secret Scientific Communities: Classification and Scientific Communication in the DOE and DoD46 Robert W. Seidel Science and Scientific Information Systems The Role of the Scientific Paper in Science Information Systems63 Bernd Frohmann The Game of the Name: Nomenclatural Instability in the History of Botanical Informatics74 Geoffrey C. Bowker Common Names: Cooperative Access to Databased Natural History Information84 Bernadette G. Callery The Evolution of the Secondary Literature in Chemistry94 Helen Schofield The History of Managing Technical Information at DuPont107 Florence H. Kvalnes Building Information Retrieval Systems for Science Development of an Information Retrieval System Based on Superimposed Coding117 James M. Cretsos The Evolution of Citation Indexing—From Computer Printout to the Web of Science124 Jacqueline Trolley and Jill O’Neill The Creation of the Science Citation Index127 Paul Wouters Information Retrieval in Science: The Professional Aspects Wilhelm Ostwald, the “Brücke” (Bridge), and Connections to Other Bibliographic Activities at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century139 Thomas Hapke Ralph Shaw and the Rapid Selector148 Jana Varlejs The Information Wars: Two Cultures and the Conflict in Information Retrieval, 1945–1999156 Mark D. Bowles Information Retrieval in Science: The Technical Aspects Examples of Early Nonconventional Technical Information Systems169 Madeline M. Henderson Microfilm Technology and Information Systems177 Susan A. Cady Mechanical Indexing: A Personal Remembrance187 Herbert Ohlman Science and Information: Some National Perspectives Soviet Scientific and Technical Information System: Its Principles, Development, Accomplishments, and Defects195 Ruggero Giliarevskii The Soviet Overseas Information Empire and the Implications of Its Disintegration206 Pamela Spence Richards Restoration of Japanese Academic Libraries and Development of Library and Information Science: The Contributions of Shigenori Baba215 Takashi Satoh History Reviewed and Revisited History Review: The Development of Information Science in the United States223 Robert M. Hayes On the Shoulders of Giants237 Eugene Garfield Pioneers’ Reminiscences252 Index 287 vii Foreword he Chemical Heritage Foundation and the American Society for Informa- Ttion Science convened the first conference on the history and heritage of science information systems in October 1998. The conference, which examined the historic roles of the chemical sciences and of chemists in the development of information systems, among many other topics, greatly benefited from the energy and generosity of one chemist and information scientist, Eugene Garfield. Gene Garfield stands in a long line of chemists and information innovators. That line begins with Robert Boyle and the organization of the Royal Society and its Philosophical Transactions in the seventeenth century and Antoine Lavoisier and the reform of chemical nomenclature and the creation of the Annales de chimie late in the eighteenth century. In more recent times chemical giants like Wilhelm Ostwald and J. D. Bernal have been great visionaries of science information sys- tems, while other chemists like James W. Perry and Frederick A. Tate have taken the lead in designing and using increasingly sophisticated automated systems. In Gene Garfield’s case the very products of his enterprise are of immediate use to the historian of science as well as to the scientist. Current Contents, the Science Citation Index, and other similar tools from the Institute for Scientific Informa- tion (ISI) allow the historian to identify the members of schools of thought and trace the growth of these schools and the growth of whole fields of science. It was through a mutual interest in these quantitative measures of science, scientometrics, that I first met Gene when we both became involved in 1970 in the effort to launch the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S). The list of winners of the 4S’s Bernal Award that he initiated is a group of sociologists and historians worthy of Nobel Prizes, including such luminaries as Derek Price and Robert K. Merton. Gene has also proved to be an enthusiast for a more traditional kind of history: the biographical memoir. In addition to four thousand Citation Classic bibliographical commentaries, he often chose to use the editorials in Cur- rent Contents to honor great scientists, including pioneer information scientists— about whom little or nothing had been written. The references cited in Gene’s paper in this volume can only hint at the extensiveness of his own historical writ- ings, which are posted on his home page at http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/ index.html. To involve others in his love for information science and its history, Gene has funded a growing web of activities at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. CHF’s Eugene Garfield Fellowship in the History of Science Information has stimulated numerous oral histories of information science pioneers and a chronology of chemi- cal information science. Gene also generously supported the CHF/ASIS confer- ence, which in turn gave rise to this volume to serve as inspiration for future historical and policy-oriented research. Arnold Thackray, President Chemical Heritage Foundation 30 July 1999 viii Preface he Conference on the History and Heritage of Science Information Systems, Theld 23–25 October 1998, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, brought to fruition the efforts of a wide variety of people. Over the last few years a small band of enthusiasts has determinedly pursued the history and heritage of science informa- tion, even though there was little support and only rare appreciation of this his- torical enterprise. Scholars working abroad or those outside the field of informa- tion science—such as the few historians of science and technology who had approached this field in their investigations—received even less support (mone- tary or otherwise). These individuals usually found themselves isolated geographi- cally from like-minded individuals or separated by disciplinary boundaries. The original purpose of the conference was to bring together as many of these dedi- cated people as possible to share with each other their research, insights, and knowl- edge. The conference organizers also seized the opportunity, unusual in most his- torical exercises, of inviting the historical figures themselves—pioneers in the automation of science information—to contribute papers or simply bear witness to the past in the form of brief reminiscences. This volume shows, I believe, just how marvelously eclectic was the conference, how stimulating was the exchange of views, and what exciting opportunities for future research exist. Among information scientists, the origins of this conference go back to the decision by the American Society of Information Science (ASIS) Foundations of Information Science Special Interest Group to reformulate the group as the His- tory and Foundations of Information Science and to organize special sessions at annual meetings. The new group requested funds from ASIS to identify and docu- ment the contributions