Transactions of the IsisCB: A Journey through the Cumulative Bibliography

Issue 1.12

It often feels like there is a lot of pressure to keep up with new literature in the history of science. This is something I have probably contributed to through my own editorial practice here at Transactions—limiting lists of new additions to the database to those citations published within the last ten years. To be sure, the liveliness of bibliography has been a central idea of the CB. It is reflected in workflows, information systems, and navigational tools, corresponding to the idea that new subjects, questions, and technologies are constantly driving bibliographic change. But, I wonder, does this emphasis on recent literature make our field less humanistic…more like the sciences we study? With apologies for that well-worn two-cultures stereotype, the question is, how should historians of science approach older literature in the field?

This will no doubt vary from topic to topic. For someone interested in the premodern history of European chemistry, say, there may well be concrete facts and figures in an older article of direct empirical utility. Then again, for someone interested in the saga of Theranos, a survey of the literature before 1975 (the IsisCB Explore only indexes citations published after that date) may provide historiographic insight, but little tractable evidence. It is reasonable to expect, moreover, that the constitution of a “thorough” search will vary with period, geographic, and subject specialization.

For those interested in bibliographic change over time, there is a lot to learn from the efforts that have gone into reconciling and updating subject classifications. The featured titles below provide examples and methods for doing this work. The citations that follow show how to track someone from the IsisCB Explore through the IsisCB Cumulative, covering more than 100 years of secondary literature in the field. A fuller account of the history, organization, and digitization of the Cumulative Bibliographies can be found here. While this data is currently only available via HTML interface, work is underway to fold it into Explore. Stay tuned!

—Judy Kaplan, Editor

Featured Books

These books represent different approaches to bibliography—limited by concept, person, and institution; exemplifying principles of descriptive, material and universal bibliography. What they all have in common, it seems to me, is a remarkable spirit of generosity. Note that Conrad Gessner’s Private Library is now available as an online resource.

Featured Articles

Here are two articles by Magda Whitrow, who served alongside John Neu as Isis bibliographer and editor during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. A librarian at Imperial College, London, she edited the first five volumes of the Cumulative Bibliography and developed the subject classification system that was used for all seven. In addition to the articles featured here, Whitrow was a frequent contributor to the Journal of Documentation.

Citations

For this issue of the newsletter, I want to demonstrate how one might trace a specific individual through bibliographies dating back to 1913. We will use Madame du Châtelet as our test subject and will look for her in three places. Our first stop will be to search for her entry in the Cumulative Bibliography, Vol I., shown here:

As you can see, she was discussed in four journal articles and five books (only one of which was reviewed) between 1913 and 1965. So far, so good.

The next step is to check to see if her name appeared in the volume dedicated to “Persons/Institutions” covering the period 1966-1975 (Vol. 6). This yields another three journal articles and one book chapter:

Finally, we can look for Du Châtelet in the IsisCB Explore, which gives us another 64 citations:

This process is much easier for people and institutions (called “authorities” in library world) than it is for subjects. I easily found “Geomorphology,” for example, in both of the Cumulative Bibliographies (Vols. 3 and 7) as well as the IsisCB Explore. “Field work,” on the other hand, did not show up as a subject classification term in the older literature.

I recommend playing around with these tools if you have time—not only will they inform specific research projects in the history of science, they also offer rich insight into where the field has been.