Technology
Scope
This overview focuses on Library of Congress holdings in the broad field of technology. For the purposes of this evaluation, technology is not synonymous with engineering--which it includes--nor is it defined as strictly applied science. Rather, it is a much wider concept encompassing the totality of means, processes, and machines that contribute to the creation of material objects with a practical purpose.
Size
Science and technology compose roughly one fourth of the total general collections of the library. It is safe to say that of that 25 percent, technology is at least co-equal with science. A very recent record count of the technology class revealed over 500,000 titles (comprising a total of well over one million volumes or pieces). If this mammoth T core were embellished by all the other classes that contained technology-related material (such as that in G (Geography, Oceanography), H (Transportation), N (Architecture), R (Medicine), S (Agriculture), U (Military Science), V (Naval Science) and by an extensive collection of over four million foreign and domestic technical reports and standards, the Library's collections in technology would rival or even exceed any other single discipline or general collecting area.
General Research Strengths
The Library is strong in the history of technology, possessing not only a significant number of rare works, but such hard-to-locate items as the publications of major technical exhibitions, expositions, centennials, and world fairs. It also possesses the memoirs, transactions, and periodicals of important technical societies, such as the Royal Society of Arts. In the overall T class, electrical engineering and electronics-related titles comprise the largest segment. One can locate virtually all of the major published source materials in those areas in English and major European languages. Other areas of strength are in mechanical engineering and machinery, aeronautics and astronautics (especially their history), and photography. The Library is perhaps strongest of all in the field of chemical technology, a field in which it collects comprehensively.
Areas of Distinction
The Library provides easy access to approximately 3.2 million technical reports--probably the world's largest and most readily-accessible collection of this kind. Included are reports issued by the Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Defense, and other U. S. government agencies as well as reports of the RAND Corporation and those of AGARD (Aeronautical Research and Development, North Atlantic Treaty). Of special historical interest is the reports collection of the World War II Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Also, the Publications Board Technical Reports contain captured German scientific documents and applications deposited with the German Patent Office during 1940-45.
A collection of standards totalling more than 500,000 titles--including military, industrial, and engineering standards--is available. Included are copies of current and historical standards and specifications issued by ANSI and its affiliated standards-producing organizations, as well as Federal and military standards (active and historical) which are commercially purchased and updated weekly. The document group of foreign national standards includes those of the former Soviet Union, China, South Africa, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Japan as well as the European Harmonized Standards and complete and up-to-date sets of standards issued by the International Organization for Standards (ISO), and the standards of the International Electrotechnical Commission.
A manuscript collection of American inventors and engineers includes the papers of such individuals as Samuel F. B. Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Robert Fulton, Lee DeForest, Andrew Ellicott, George Washington Goethals, Montgomery C. Meigs, John A. B. Dahlgren, John Ericsson, Herman Hollerith, Frederic E. Ives, and Mahlon Loomis.
Several special collections in the history of aeronautics include such names as Tissandier, Silberer, Hornes, Maggs, Langley, Chanute, Hildebrandt, Mitchell, Spaatz, Arnold, Sikorsky as well as the papers and photographs of Wilbur and Orville Wright and World War II Strategic Bombing Photographs.
Among the many U. S. government documents pertinent to technology is the Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS). This file is available in paper and microformat and consists of translations from the technical literature of the former Soviet bloc as well as from China.
The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) Collection contains measured drawings and photographs of early American architecture in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) Collection includes site plans, locational maps, and road maps for some 200 major engineering structures in the U. S.
The Library has an extensive browse file of remote sensing images and aerial photographs as well as two aerial photographic print collections. It provides access to nearly seven million world-wide photographic images taken by NASA, USGS, NOAA, and the Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service.
Nearly half of the roughly 200 abstracting and indexing services available in the Library's Science Reading Room are pertinent to some aspect of technology. Also available there is a Science and Technology CD-ROM Network which provides access to over ten million bibliographic citations and includes a dedicated IEEE CD-ROM workstation.
Weaknesses/Exclusions
The Library defers to the National Library of Medicine in the field of clinical medicine and to the National Agricultural Library in the area of technical agriculture. It also defers to the U. S. Patent Office and makes no attempt to collect patents comprehensively or systematically. Although the Library has improved its collecting of "Grey Literature" in recent years and has drafted an acquisitions policy statement for technical reports, conference proceedings and technical reports still remain a problem area in identification, acquisitions, and bibliographic control.
In 1991, the Library conducted a Core Engineering Journals Project in which it checked a list of 1,350 core journals abstracted and indexed by Engineering Information Inc. Approximately 250 titles were not held by LC, and about 530 titles had missing issues which needed to be claimed.
Technology places a special emphasis on currency of information, and it is not always possible in an institution of this size to satisfy this important demand. Since this problem is compounded by the failure of some publishers to deposit important technical information as well as by our own inability to claim sufficiently, possessing very current information is not one of our strong points.
