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Collection Policy Statement Index

Contents:

I. Scope
II. Research strengths
III. General policy and collecting intensity

I. Scope

This section of the Collections Policy Statement on the History of Science and Technology covers all of the subclasses of Science and Technology and treats the history of all of these disciplines as taken together. In a certain sense all of the materials in Q and T are part of the history of science and technology. In addition, some of the numerous abstracting and indexing services, catalogs of other scientific and technical libraries, specialized bibliographies, and finding aids for the history of science and technology are maintained in class Z.

II. Research Strengths

1. General
   
   The Library's collections are strong in both the history of science and the history of technology. Both collections comprise two major elements: the seminal works of science and technology, and the works of scientific and technological historiography. The former comprise the real "stuff" of science and technology as they were composed by the "doers" themselves. These landmark works can be viewed as primary sources in science and technology or as rungs in its sometimes progressive ladder. Well-known examples that most would recognize are Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica and Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. In addition to these and many other major works, there is the far greater number of second-level monographs that are somewhat lesser known but still of prime significance. With these should also be included long runs of virtually all the major journals of science and technology (some of which date from the seventeenth century), in that they contain the analogous classics of science and technology but in the form of papers and articles. Contrasted to these primary sources are secondary works that, with a traditional historical narrative, link these primary works and tell a story of scientific and technological development. These are works of historiography or analysis and interpretation that critically examine sources and synthesize their particulars into a general narrative that will stand the test of the critical method. Any institution like the Library of Congress that aspires to collect comprehensively in the history of science and technology must fully address both of these dimensions and seek to obtain the important primary (original) works along with their secondary (synthetic) counterparts.
   
   The Library addresses both of these tasks directly and to support the scholar in search of retrospective primary and secondary materials in science and technology in all the major European languages as well as English. Because it has been acquiring scientific and technical material since its inception, the Library's collections are very broad and deep. The 1866 Act of Congress that transferred to the Library from the Smithsonian Institution about 40,000 volumes of memoirs, transactions, and periodicals of learned scientific societies, museums, exploring expeditions, and observatories throughout the world considerably broadened the science and technology collections and permanently influenced their development. Subsequent yearly deposits ran this total to over 580,000 volumes before it was merged with the general collections. In addition, the acquisition of several rare book collections (Rosenwald, Thacher, Toner, and Vollbehr) contributed significantly to the Library's holdings of scientific and technical incunabula as well as classic first editions.
2. Areas of distinction The Library's collections are comprehensive for scientific and technical materials published in the United States. In the Research Library Group Conspectus of collection levels, the Library was rated as a level 4 (research) in almost all S&T areas with the exception of medicine and agriculture. An area rating a 5 (comprehensive) was the history of aeronautics and astronautics. Other subjects of notable historical strength include gastronomy, photography, and psychoanalysis.
   
   The Library's collections of rare works in the history of science and technology are one of the strongest in the country. As an indication of this, the Library has roughly 90 percent of the works listed in Bern Dibner, Heralds of Science (1955) and Harrison D. Horblit, One Hundred Books Famous in Science (1958). It also has a strong representation of the scientific and technical works listed in Printing and the Mind of Man (1967).
   
   This strength in landmark monographs is complemented by a manuscript collection that includes the papers of Sigmund Freud, Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel F. B. Morse, the Wright Brothers, Glenn Seaborg, George Gamow, John von Neumann, and J. Robert Oppenheimer among other notables. In science policy and the Federal government, the Library has the papers of Alan Waterman, Vannevar Bush, and Merle Tuve.
   
   Related to this is the Library's great depth of biographical materials in its general collections. This varied and substantial body of work spans the time of Greece and Rome to present day and contains biographical materials recording the scientific and technological accomplishments and the personal and public lives of the major natural philosophers, scientists, and engineers of those times.

III. General policy and collecting intensity levels for history of science and history of technology.

The Library of Congress strives for research level coverage of the history of science and the history of technology in all periods, with the exception of agriculture and medicine. The goal of its acquisition policy in the history of science and technology is to acquire works in all languages which treat the history of a scientific discipline or scientific thought and practice (technology) generally, and to acquire the published works of the scientists, engineers, and inventors of the past. The emphasis is on original texts, critical editions, scholarly commentaries, anthologies, journals, reference works, and biographies. The overall context for this policy is the Library's position as the national library and its function as library of last resort. Acquisitions in other formats relating to the history of science and technology are obtained in order to build on our current strengths and to build up strengths where appropriate. Since the history of science and technology is a broadening and increasingly interdisciplinary field, a research level collection should be maintained whose emphasis is on works in the history of major S&T institutions, societies and movements, as well as on the major social consequences of science and technology.

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