Towards an international bibliographical database in the history of science, technology and medicine

by R. W. Home

A workshop on bibliographical tools in the history of science, technology and medicine, sponsored by the Commission on Bibliography and Documentation of the Division of History of Science, IUHPS, was held at Liège, Belgium, on 25-26 September 1995. Hosted by Professor Robert Halleux, Secretary-General of DHS and Head of the Centre d'Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques, Université de Liège, the meeting brought together the compilers of a number of the leading bibliographies covering aspects of current work in the history of science, technology and medicine that are published on a serial basis throughout the world, and a number of interested historians of science. At an earlier meeting held at Trento, Italy, in 1992, a proposal had been advanced to make the information contained in these bibliographies more widely available by developing a unified international bibliographical database in electronic form. The present meeting was intended to advance this project. Some of the most important existing bibliographies are already available on-line, and the meeting saw impressive demonstrations of the History of Science and Technology (HST) file maintained by the Research Libraries Group (RLG) in the USA and made available through the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) subscription service, and of the on-line version of the Italian national bibliography of the history of science, Bibliografia Italiana di Storia della Scienza (BISS). The HST file includes the bibliographies of the history of science published annually in Isis since 1976, and the bibliographies of the history of technology published in Technology and Culture since 1987. The electronic file has a variety of indexes that are not available in the better-known paper versions, and may be searched by subject or title word as well as alphabetical phrase listing. It thus constitutes an even more valuable tool for the researcher. The meeting was told that an agreement has recently been signed that will see the very large French database, FRANCIS, that includes the bibliographies of the history of science formerly published in the Bulletin signalétique series, mounted on RLIN. Once this is done, RLG and INIST, the organization responsible for FRANCIS, could explore the possibility of adding a copy of the history of science segment to the existing HST file, thus very considerably enriching the latter. In addition, negotiations are well advanced to add the BISS database to the HST file, while also leaving it available free through the Internet. The meeting noted that several other bibliographies are produced regularly, some on a national basis (e.g. Australia, Belgium, Spain), others covering specific subject areas in the history of science (e.g. metrology, oceanography scientific instruments). There are also two major bibliographies reporting current work in the history of medicine, the Bibliography of the History of Medicine produced by the National Library of Medicine in the USA and Current Work in the History of Medicine, produced by the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in the UK, both of which were represented at the meeting. The former of these has long been accessible electronically as part of the enormous medical database, MEDLINE, and it has recently been decided that in future it will only be accessible in that form. Two important listings unfortunately seem recently to have ceased being produced, namely the bibliography of Russian work in the history of science and technology that was published for many years by the Institute for the History of Science and Technology in Moscow and the very valuable bibliography of the history of natural history that was produced for a number of years by the Natural History Museum in London. The meeting was told that the future of the history of science segment of FRANCIS was far from secure, and it was agreed that the Commission on Bibliography and Documentation should make representations to the relevant French authorities, urging upon them the importance of maintaining and even strengthening the systematic bibliographical coverage of francophone work in this field. It was also agreed that representations should be made to the National Library of Medicine concerning the desirability of maintaining a printed version of its bibliography of the history of medicine. It was noted that at present, no bibliographies are being regularly produced covering the work being done by several major national or regional groups of historians of science and technology, including those in India, Latin America and the Muslim world. The lack of systematic bibliographical coverage of German-language publications was particularly striking. The meeting considered at length the means by which the proposed database might be made accessible to users. For individual compilers simply to put their products "free to air" would be a recipe for chaos: active management of the files, such as is provided for the HST database on RLIN, will become more and more necessary as more files are brought into the scheme. This, however, generates costs which, in the case of RLIN, are covered by the fees paid by institutional subscribers to the service. (The fee payable currently varies from US$570 to $900 per annum for up to five simultaneous users, or $1,480 to $2,610 for up to 25 simultaneous users, depending on whether the subscribing institution is a member of RLG and on whether the HST subscription is linked to RLG's RLIN Bibliographic database.) These costs would have to be met in some way, however the scheme were to be run. At the same time, it was agreed that it was important to ensure that access to the scheme was not confined to the privileged few but that it was open to all potential users. At present, some sixty-one institutions, mostly universities through their libraries, subscribe to the service and provide free access to users within that institution. The possibility was noted of a consortium of libraries taking out a combined subscription to RLIN's HST file, as had been done by a group of eighteen university libraries in Ohio, and by a group of university libraries in Australia, in each case substantially reducing the subscription that had to be paid by individual participating libraries. The RLG representative at the meeting, John Haeger, indicated that his organization would also be prepared to explore other options that would help reduce the cost to individual users. The meeting also considered some of the technical problems in maintaining world-wide access to a database, especially in relation to the slowness with which the system operated during busy periods (a problem that was all too evident during the demonstration at the meeting of the RLIN system). The possibility of establishing "mirror" sites on different continents was aired but was discounted by John Haeger on behalf of RLG on the ground of cost. He explained that RLG's preferred alternative was to establish dedicated lines - as many as necessary - on routes such as the transatlantic link where the open network was consistently overloaded and slow; the HST file was, comparatively speaking, a very small segment of the RLIN operation, but subscribers to it would automatically benefit from the fact that RLG had recently entered into agreements with major European libraries that would require it to maintain high-quality intercontinental linkages. Following extensive discussion of the issues involved, the meeting agreed to report to the Executive Committee of the Division of History of Science the Commission's aim of creating a world bibliographical database of current work in the history of science, technology and medicine, and to recommend that the existing HST file on RLIN be used as the starting point of the proposed database. The Commission supported the bibliographical initiatives of RLG in the field of the history of science, technology and medicine, and would endorse efforts by different European partners to initiate or develop on-line bibliographical works in this field with the support of the European Union. While noting that the choice as to whether additional national or thematic bibliographies should seek to adhere to RLIN was entirely at the discretion of their initiators, the Commission would warmly encourage them to do so. European members of the Commission (from Belgium, France, Great Britain and Italy) observed that, apart from the bibliographies produced by the Wellcome Institute and the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, bibliographical work in the field of the history of science, technology and medicine needed to be strengthened within the countries of the European Union. In particular, it should be revived in France, improved in Belgium and initiated in Germany. These partners agreed to put forward a project to the European Union, seeking finance to set up a common database. This partnership would initially involve Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, and would subsequently incorporate the other countries of the Union. The partnership would ultimately be enlarged to include Turkey, the Baltic States, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The meeting noted that a set of bibliographical guidelines needed to be prepared for the proposed international database, that could be made available to all national or other teams planning to elaborate a bibliography with a view to having it incorporated in the international database. A working group was appointed, comprising Anna Citernesi (Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza), Henry Lowood (Stanford University) and John Neu (University of Wisconsin), to define these guidelines. It is envisaged that the working group will submit a preliminary report in the Spring of 1996. Once the guidelines are agreed, the Commission will make them available to all interested groups. Anyone wishing to be sent a copy should contact Dr Lowood, joint secretary of the Commission, at Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA 94305-6004, USA (fax:(415)7251068. e-mail: henry.lowood@forsythe.stanford.edu).

Address: R.W. Home, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3052, Australia.