Seriality and the search for order: Scientific print and its problems during the late nineteenth century

History of Science

Volumn 48, Issue 3-4, 2010, Pages 399-434

  Csiszar, Alex ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 78751489461     PISSN: 00732753     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/007327531004800306     Document Type: Article

References (166)

1. Hooker to Darwin, [before 7 Mar. 1855], in F. Burkhardt et al. (eds), The correspondence of Charles Darwin (Cambridge, 1985- ; hereafter CCD), v, 277-8.
2. Arthur Henfrey (ed.), Botanical and physiological memoirs (London, 1853), 312-13. 'Books to be Read' notebook (1852-1860), f. 177
3. CCD, iv, 482.
4. L'ancien regime et la revolution (1856), Livre 3, chap. IV, "Que le regne de Louis XVI a ete l'epoque la plus prospere de l' ancienne monarchie, et comment cette prosperite meme hata la Revolution".
5. Darwin wonders about the form of the document in his letter to Arthur Henfrey on 17 Mar. [1855], in CCD, v, 286.
6. Darwin's original reference in his "Books to be Read" notebook (ref. 2) seems only to have consisted of the information in the original citation, "Godron, De l'Espèce et des Races." Other details were added later on when Darwin learned them. An image of the relevant notebook page may be viewed at The complete work of Charles Darwin online, CUL-DAR128, f. 177, http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=CUL-DAR128.- &viewtype=image&pageseq=7.
7. Darwin to Henfrey, 17 Mar. [1855] (ref. 4). For more on Darwin's reading habits, see Susan Sheets-Pyenson, "Darwin's data: His reading of natural history journals, 1837-1842", Journal of the history of biology, xiv (1981), 231-48.
8. "I am very sorry that you have had such extra bother about Godron ... it is too bad in me, though the unintentional cause of all this trouble", Darwin to Hooker on 7 Mar. [1855], in CCD, v, 279.
9. Darwin to Henfrey on 17 and 31 March 1855, CCD, v, 286, 295-6. Braun's original, Betrachtungen über die Erscheinung der Verjüngung in der Natur (Leipzig, 1851), contains no more information.
10. Darwin to Lyell, 18 May 1860, CCD, viii, 218;
11. Darwin to Hooker, 15 [June] 1855, CCD, v, 354.
12. Darwin was reading Florula juvenalis, ou, énumération des plantes étrangéres qui croissent naturellement au Port Juvénal, près de Montpellier, précédée de considérations sur les migrations des végétaux, 2nd edn (Nancy, 1854).
13. Darwin to Hooker, 10 Aug. 1855, CCD, v, 403-4.
14. Godron's citation of his own work was actually to two distinct papers in consecutive volumes of the Mémoires de la Société des Sciences, Lettres et Arts de Nancy (1848, pp. 182-288, and 1849, pp. 111-150). Darwin did mark the paper as read in his "Books to be Read" notebook, but it is likely this was done only after reading the later book (see below).
15. Darwin provides a running commentary on his reading of Godron in letters to Lyell, 18 May 1860;
16. Hooker, 22 [May] 1860
17. Lyell, 6 June 1860, CCD, viii, 218, 226, 243-4.
18. Darwin to Henfrey, 31 Mar. [1855], CCD, v, 395-6.
19. H. E. Strickland (ed.), Bibliographia zoologiae et geologiae: A general catalogue of all books, tracts, and memoirs on zoology and geology (London, 1848-54).
20. Comptes rendus hebdomadaires, xxvi (1848), 487.
21. In the case of Braun, this is established by the page numbers he cites, and in the case of the Comptes rendus, by the date his pamphlet is listed as received: 1 May 1848. (The volume of Memoires for 1847 could not have been published earlier than July 1848, for it contains a members list that is current as of that month.) Besides pagination there are other subtle differences: although the typesetting is nearly identical, the position of each page in its corresponding signature is offset by five pages, and Godron has made one set of corrections; all of his page references to the Oeuvres of Buffon (which he appears initially to have copied from references in P. Flourens, Analyse raisonnée des travaux de Georges Cuvier (Paris, 1841)), have been changed to page references to the first edition of the Histoire naturelle. (New errors were simultaneously introduced, and were finally corrected only in the 1859 monograph.)
22. The monopoly that the peer-reviewed journal exercised as the rightful channel by which to circulate and to stake scientific claims during the twentieth century is now giving way to a new mixed economy of genres that include preprint archives, working papers, and patent documents.
23. On what is arguably the first instance of the new genre, Frangois Rozier's Observations sur la physique, sur l'histoire naturelle et sur les arts (f. 1771)
24. see J. E. McClellan, "The scientific press in transition: Rozier's journal and the scientific societies in the 1770s", Annals of science, xxxvi (1979), 425-49.
25. By the late eighteenth century this was true even of the Royal Society's Philosophical transactions, which, once the Royal Society took responsibility for it in 1852, had gradually shifted from being a monthly or quarterly philosophical newsletter to resembling the more lavish and less frequently-published Memoires of the French Académie des Sciences.
26. This difficulty is discussed in some detail in the Rapport sur la réforme de la bibliographie scientifique (Paris, 1895) put together by a committee of the Association Frangaise pour l'Avancement des Sciences.
27. "Autobiography of a physiologist" [on Karl Ernst von Baer], The quarterly review, cxxii (1867), 335-47, p. 343.
28. On the continuing importance of conversation in scientific work and for establishing priority in midcentury Britain, see James A. Secord, "How scientific conversation became shop talk", in A. Fyfe and B. Lightman (eds), Science in the marketplace: Nineteenth-century sites and experiences (Chicago, 2007), 23-59;
29. and "Science, technology and mathematics", in Cambridge history of the book in Britain, v (Cambridge, 2009), 443-74, p. 444.
30. "The new planet", The civil engineer and architect's journal, ix (1846), 331-2.
31. See George Airy, "Account of some circumstances historically connected with the discovery of the planet exterior to Uranus", Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, xvi (1847), 385-414
32. and Robert W. Smith, "The cambridge network in action: The discovery of Neptune", Isis, lxxx (1989), 395-422.
33. F. Arago, "Examen des remarques critiques et des questions de priorité que la découverte de Le Verrier a soulevées", Comptes rendus hebdomadaires, xxiii (1846), 741-55, p. 751.
34. (All translations from the French are my own.) For the fiercest denial of the priority of print in the context of the Neptune affair see David Brewster, "Researches respecting the new planet Neptune", North British review, vii (1847), 207-46.
35. I am here extending to the nineteenth century arguments that Adrian Johns has made about the ambiguous role of print for early modern experimental collectives. Johns himself speculates how such an argument might proceed for the nineteenth century in the concluding chapter of The nature of the book (Chicago, 2000).
36. "A conspectus of science", Quarterly review, cxcvii (1903), 139-60, pp. 147-8.
37. Heroic narratives of the scientific journal have often looked to the founding of the Philosophical transactions as if this event definitively established an ideal solution to making things public in the modern sciences. See for instance Mary Boas Hall, Henry Oldenburg: Shaping the Royal Society (Oxford, 2002).
38. The same heroic account of the scientific journal has been used in guides to ethical research and publishing in the sciences. See On being a scientist: Responsible conduct in research (Washington, DC, 1995), published by the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy in the United States, pp. 9-10.
39. "The bibliography of periodical literature", The library, viii (1896), 49-64, p. 49.
40. A detailed conception of 'genres of synthesis' has recently been developed by Nasser Zakariya in the context of twentieth-century physicist George Gamow's efforts to imagine and develop possible forms for the unification of science. In Zakariya's usage, the emphasis is on the formalist dimensions of 'genre' (his principal categories are the historical, the exploratory, the scaled, and the foundationalist), whereas my focus is on the material formats scientists envisaged for producing a 'conspectus of science'. We share, however, a deep commitment to tracing links between conceptual forms for imagining the unity of science and the representational genres with which these have usually been coproduced. (See chap. 2 of Nasser Zakariya, "Towards a final story: Time, myth, and the origins of the universe", Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2010.)
41. "Decentralisation in science", Nature, xxviii (1883), 386.
42. For various early modern iterations of this trope see for instance James Bono, The word of God and the languages of man (Madison, 1995).
43. J. C. Maxwell, "Essays at Cambridge - 1853 to 1856", in The life of James Clerk Maxwell (London, 1882), 354;
44. Hermann von Helmholtz, "Über das Verhältniss der Naturwissenschaften zur Gesammtheit der Wissenschaft" [1862], in Populdre wissenschaftliche Vorträge, i (Braunschweig, 1865), 1-30, p. 12;
45. Lord Rayleigh, "Presidential address", in Report of the fifty-fourth meeting of the British Association [in 1884] (London, 1885), 3-23, p. 20;
46. Henri Poincaré, "Les relations entre la physique expérimentale et la physique mathématique", in Rapports du Congrès International de Physique (Paris, 1900), 1-29, p. 4.
47. The best source on the history of the Institut is W. Boyd Rayward, The universe of information (Moscow, 1975).
48. On the organisation of science (London, 1892). A Free Lance was a pseudonym for Frank H. Perry Coste (later Perrycoste) (1864-1928). Trained as a botanist (B.Sc. 1891, joined the Linnean Society the same year), this brief but eventful foray into science policy helped inspire him to reinvent himself as a social philosopher in the Spencerian mode. His next major work, Towards utopia (being speculations in social evolution) (London, 1894), extended his advocacy of rational organization in science to the human race in general.
49. E.g., Michael Foster, "On the organisation of science", Nature, xlix (1894), 563-4, p. 563;
50. T. D. A. Cockerell, "A suggestion for the indexing of zoological literature", Nature, xlvi (1892), 442;
51. and A Free Lance, op. cit. (ref. 30), 4.
52. E.g. Review of reviews (British), x (1894), 194
53. and Nature, i (1894), 539.
54. E.g. Foster, Nature, op. cit. (ref. 31), 564
55. and Henry Armstrong, "Scientific bibliography", Nature, liv (1896), 617-18, p. 618.
56. F. G. Donnan, "The organisation of scientific literature", Nature, xlviii (1893), 436.
57. See the essays by Ann Blair, B. W. Ogilvie, and R. R. Yeo in D. Rosenberg (ed.), Early modern information overload, special issue of the Journal of the history of ideas, lxiv, no. 1 (2003). In his introductory essay, Rosenberg suggests the possibility that "perceptions of information overload have less to do with the quantity of information in production or circulation at any time than with the qualities by which knowledge is represented" (p. 9). This is my view precisely.
58. For the figure of 'indigestion' see Barnabe Rich, A nevv description of Ireland (London, 1610) ("Epistle to the Reader", n.p.);
59. for an extended used of the 'flood' metaphor see H. Basnage de Beauval, Histoire des ouvrages des savans, July 1688, 339 ("une espece de deluge, & un debordement de Livres qui menace d'inonder la Republique des Lettres").
60. M. Foster, "The organisation of science", in Atti dell'XI Congresso Medico Internazionale Roma (Rome, 1895), 246-56, p. 254.
61. E.g. T. J. Parker, "Suggestions for securing greater uniformity of nomenclature in biology", Nature, xlv (1891), 68-9;
62. Cockerell, op. cit. (ref. 31);
63. T. R. R. Stebbing, "On random publishing and rules of priority", Natural science, v (1894), 337-44;
64. F. A. Bather, "Zoological bibliography and publication", in Report of the sixty-seventh meeting of the British Association [in 1897] (London, 1898), 359-62.
65. On the moral obligation to search the literature, see for instance, D. Sharp, The object and method of zoological nomenclature (London, 1873), 17;
66. and Foster, op. cit. (ref. 37).
67. J. S. Billings, "Our medical literature", in Transactions in the seventh session of the International Medical Congress (London, 1881), 54-71, p. 55.
68. A Free Lance, op. cit. (ref. 30), 28.
69. Foster, A Free Lance, op. cit. (ref. 31), 563.
70. That there was a social geography to search practices, and that it was precisely students and more marginal figures who tended to be most exercised by the problem of formal access to the literature, was a point often remarked upon. See "Order or chaos?", Nature, xlviii (1893), 241;
71. and "Zoological nomenclature", Natural science, viii (1896), 218.
72. On the history of bibliographical listings, see Luigi Balsamo, Bibliography: History of a tradition (Berkeley, 1990), 143-76. Subject-specific bibliographies for monographs were widespread during the eighteenth century.
73. E.g., Oliver Lodge, "The publication of physical papers", Nature, xlviii (1893), 292-3.
74. See E. A. Minchin, "A plea for an international zoological record", Nature, xlvi (1892), 367-8;
75. and F. A. Bather et al., "An international zoological record", Nature, xlvi (1892), 416-17.
76. Stebbing, Nature, op. cit. (ref. 38), 337, 338
77. Cockerell, Nature, op. cit. (ref. 31), 442.
78. See A. Cayley, R. Grant, and G. G. Stokes, in Report of the twenty-sixth meeting of the British Association [in 1856] (London, 1857), 463-4. Plans for a subject index were repeatedly postponed and made real progress only once its successor, the International Catalogue project, forced a solution to the divisive question of classification. The final volume of the original Catalogue, completing the century, eventually appeared in 1925.
79. See Secord, Report of the twenty-sixth meeting of the British Association [in 1856], op. cit. (ref. 19), 444.
80. The Catalogue listed Godron's paper, along with its serial source, in vol. ii, published in 1868.
81. For commentary from scientists on the pros and cons of using the Catalogue of scientific papers, see the numerous responses the Royal Society received to its proposal for a new International Catalogue (Archives of the Royal Society, MS 531).
82. "Two workers at a given subject living in different parts of the world invent each a terminology of his own. Each system is adopted by the inventor's own friends or countrymen" (Parker, Report of the twenty-sixth meeting of the British Association [in 1856], op. cit. (ref. 38), 68).
83. See Harriet Ritvo, "Zoological nomenclature and the empire of Victorian science", in B. Lightman (ed.), Victorian science in context (Chicago, 1997), 334-53, p. 338.
84. H. E. Strickland et al., "Report of a Committee appointed 'to consider the rules by which the Nomenclature of Zoology may be established on a uniform and permanent basis'", in Report of the twelfth meeting of the British Association [in 1842] (London, 1843), 105-21, p. 114.
85. Daydon Jackson (ed.), Index Kewensis (1893- ). Hooker's description of Darwin's role is quoted in Kew bulletin of miscellaneous information, vii (1893), 343.
86. Although indexes and catalogues for academic research would continue to proliferate throughout the twentieth century across many disciplines, the question to what extent and how they have actually been used by researchers has received little historical attention. A start, for the case of twentieth-century social sciences, has recently been made in an excellent series of papers by Andrew Abbott. See "The traditional future: A computational theory of library research", College and research libraries, lxix (2008), 524-45.
87. See "Suggestions by Professor Armstrong", Procedure Committee Minutes (Archives of the Royal Society, CMB 43).
88. "Physics at the British Association", Nature, xlviii (1893), 525-9, p. 529.
89. The problem of language barriers was often remarked upon. See for instance Lodge, Nature, op. cit. (ref. 45), 293.
90. James Swinburne, "The publication of physical papers", Nature, xlviii (1893), 197-8, p. 197. Swinburne would be a central figure in the founding of Science abstracts in 1898, established jointly by the Physical Society and the Institution of Electrical Engineer; its direct descendant, Inspec (1967- ), remains one of the chief abstracting services for physics and engineering papers.
91. Lodge, op. cit. (ref. 45), 292-3.
92. S. P. Thompson, "The diffusion of scientific memoirs", Nature, xxix (1883), 171.
93. J. Y. Buchanan, "Publication of scientific papers", Nature, xlviii (1893), 340-1.
94. See for instance A. P. Trotter, "The publication of physical papers", Nature, xlviii (1893), 412-13;
95. and A Free Lance, op. cit. (ref. 30), 8.
96. "Order or chaos?" (ref. 43), 241.
97. Buchanan, Order or chaos?, op. cit. (ref. 63), 340.
98. Trotter, op. cit. (ref. 64), 412.
99. Isaac Taylor, "A word wanted", The academy, xxvii (1885), 244. A number of other candidates were suggested in The academy beginning in March 1885. These included deprint, authordraft, partprint, exprint, overprint, by-print, transprint, and afterprint.
100. A. B. Basset, "The organisation of scientific literature", Nature, xlviii (1893), 436.
101. Gustaf Enestrom to Poincare, 24 May 1885 (Archives Henri Poincare, Nancy, France).
102. Poincare to Enestrom, 3 June 1885 (Archives of the RSAS Center for History of Sciences, available also at the Archives Henri Poincare (ref. 70)).
103. Bather, Nature, op. cit. (ref. 38), 361.
104. See also the Rapport sur la réforme de la bibliographie scientifique (Paris, 1895).
105. A Free Lance, op. cit. (ref. 30), 4
106. Donnan, A Free Lance, op. cit. (ref. 34), 436.
107. Foster, "Organisation of science" (ref. 31), 563.
108. To disparage the Philosophical transactions had itself become a kind of trope. See for instance Lodge, Organisation of science, Organisation of science, op. cit. (ref. 45), 293;
109. A Free Lance, op. cit. (ref. 30), 6-9;
110. and H. E. Armstrong, "Presidential address", Journal of the Chemical Society, lxv (1894), 336-78, pp. 344-5. This questioning of the Royal Society's right to publish original scientific work represented a crucial reversal of mid-century norms, when the President of the Chemical Society, for instance, justified his society's publishing activities by contending that it did not lure authors away from publishing work that by rights belonged in the Transactions.
111. See the "Annual report", Quarterly journal of the Chemical Society, v (1853), 153-65, p. 163.
112. "Wanted: A science reform", Chemist & druggist, xli (1892), 583-4, p. 583.
113. Michael Foster, Letter to the President presented at the Council Meeting of 5 July 1893. A copy of this letter is pasted into the Procedure Committee Minutes Book (CMB 43, Archives of the Royal Society, n.p.).
114. Natural science, i (1892), 241-3, p. 242.
115. See Procedure Committee Minutes (ref. 77). See also the Royal Society Council Minutes, 5 July 1893.
116. E.g., Buchanan, Natural science, op. cit. (ref. 63), 340
117. Foster, Natural science, op. cit. (ref. 39), 256
118. Lodge, Natural science, op. cit. (ref. 45), 292;
119. and Armstrong, "Presidential address" (ref. 75), 343.
120. Anonymous review of A Free Lance's pamphlet in Natural science, i (1892), 242-3, p. 243.
121. "Wanted: A science reform" (ref. 76), 583. (Vincent was the founding director of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police of London.)
122. "A move toward scientific socialism", Chemical world, March 1914, 67-71. The basic outlines of this debate would be repeated in the 1940s when John Desmond Bernal proposed anew a central distribution scheme for scientific papers. The main difference - besides the heightened ideological stakes of the 'Freedom in Science' battles - is that by the 1940s the crucial role of the journal in the assessment of scientific value was so well established that his proposal was greeted with near-universal alarm and apprehension by scientists and non-scientists alike.
123. Henry Alfred Todd, "Cooperative bibliography", in Proceedings of the eighteenth annual meeting of the Modern Language Association of America (1900), pp. xi-xvi, p. xii.
124. The one exception is the Societe bibliographique, a Catholic organization that was founded to "battle against intellectual and moral depravity" through better bibliographical oversight of the press. The connection between bibliographical lists and religious censorship has its own storied history, going back at least to the sixteenth-century Index librorum prohibitorum.
125. See Robert Byrnes, "The French publishing industry and its crisis in the 1890's", Journal of modern history, xxiii (1951), 232-42;
126. Benoit Lecoq, "Les revues", in Histoire de l'édition française, iv (Paris, 1982), 333-9.
127. For details on the establishment of the first press-clipping bureau, see Anke te Heesen, Der Zeitungsausschnitt (Frankfurt, 2006)
128. and Boris Dänzer-Kantof and Sophie Nanot, Le roman vrai de l'Argus de la presse (Paris, 2000).
129. The standard Argus de la presse advertisement during the 1890s claimed to "lit, découpe et traduit tous les journaux du monde, et en fournit les extraits sur n'importe quel sujet"; later advertisementss simply stated "VOIT TOUT".
130. See Heesen, Der Zeitungsausschnitt (ref. 87), 84-8, for more on the dream versus the reality of these services.
131. Ch. Limousin, "L'éphémérographie: Bibliographie des journaux et publications périodiques", Bulletin de l'IIB, v (1900), 146.
132. The Institut's precise name fluctuated; it was variously known as the Institut de Bibliographie Scientifique, the Institut International de Bibliographique Scientifique, and the Institut International de Bibliographie Medicale.
133. Marcel Baudouin, "Le problème bibliographique", Revue scientifique, iv (1895), 708-15, p. 708.
134. John Shaw Billings (1838-1913) was deputy surgeon-general and librarian of the Surgeon-General's Office (later the National Library of Medicine) until retiring in 1895 and becoming founding director of the New York Public Library. He also founded the Index-catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office, a retrospective catalogue of medical literature. (The Index medicus was a current index.)
135. For an account of the modern history of the index card, see Markus Krajewski, Zettelwirtschaft: die Geburt der Kartei aus dem Geiste der Bibliothek (Berlin, 2002). (An English translation, Notes & quotes: Cards, catalogs, and office efficiency, 1548-1929 is forthcoming.) For the index card's late nineteenth-century migration to Europe from the United States, see the sixth chapter.
136. Baudouin, "Le problème bibliographique" (ref. 91), 708-9.
137. La bibliographie scientifique, i (1895), 110.
138. Circulating libraries were also founded for other disciplines. A Bibliothèque Mathématique des Travailleurs, for instance, was founded in Paris in 1895.
139. See Les tablettes du chercheur, vi (1895), 212-14.
140. See the massive user survey, "La science dans les bibliothèques", published by the Revue scientifique in July-August 1905.
141. "L'Institut désire jouer, dans le domaine scientifique, le rôle dévolu dans la grande Presse ̀a l'Agence Havas, à l'Agence Nationale, etc.", La bibliographie scientifique, ii (1896), 18.
142. Bulletin des sommaires des journaux scientifiques, littéraires, financiers, i, no. 6 (1888), 44; ii, no. 13 (1889), 100; ii, no. 14 (1889), 108.
143. In the early 1890s, Baudouin was a préparateur at the Faculté de Médicine in Paris. Unluckily, he is now perhaps best known as the Parisian doctor who performed a detailed medical examination of Joseph Pujol, the professional flatulist (la Pétomane).
144. These included Le progrès médical, Archives provinciales de chirurgie, and the Gazette médicale de Paris.
145. "Causerie", Bulletin des sommaires, ii (1889), 100.
146. See chap. 4 of Krajewski, op. cit. (ref. 93).
147. E. L. Mark, "Dr. Phil. Herbert Haviland Field, 1868-1921" (Schaffhausen, 1921), 2. Field himself recounted that he had subsequently become fascinated with finding better means of locating papers in his well-trod sub-discipline (Annotationes concilii bibliographici, iii (1907), 1).
148. Field participated in the British debates on the reform of scientific publishing that I analysed in Part I. See "An international zoological record", Nature, xlvii (1893), 606-7.
149. Robert Fox, "The early history of the Société Zoologique de France", in his The culture of science in France, 1700-1900 (Aldershot, 1992).
150. The Société had taken up the problem of nomenclature early in its existence, but the matter hardly progressed until Blanchard pushed it forcefully onto the agenda of the 1889 International Congress. See R. V. Melville, Towards stability in the names of animals (London, 1995).
151. Gordon McOuat has published a fascinating series of essays on the history and philosophy of the connections between species, nomenclature, and cataloguing. See his "Species, rules and meaning", Studies in history and philosophy of science, xxi (1996), 473-519
152. and "The politics of 'natural kinds'", in U. Klein (ed.), Spaces of classification (Berlin, 2003), 97-114.
153. For this reason, it is not surprising that Julius Victor Carus, the great figure of zoological bibliography, was also a founding member of the 5-person Nomenclature Commission.
154. For Field's initial proposal, see "La réforme bibliographique", Mémoires de la Société Zoologique de France, 1894, 259-63.
155. The Commission also included Baudouin, Charles-Marie Gariel, Charles Richet and Adolphe Cartaz. Their report appeared in the Bulletin de l'AFAS, lxxiii (1895), 31-9.
156. Its place on the agenda just preceded the formation of the Nomenclature Commission.
157. E.-L. Bouvier's "Rapport sur le projet de reforme bibliographique" was followed by the nomination of a 7-member committee. The Société was among the first to put up funds for the new Bureau, which would be directed by Field.
158. Annotationes concilii bibliographici, ii (1906), 31-7.
159. "Causerie", Bulletin des sommaires, ii (1889), 100.
160. None achieved total success. Limousin's enterprise eventually folded in 1903. Baudouin's Institut faired better; contemporary accounts suggest that it was a bustling enterprise, eventually becoming a joint-stock company, but it too folded in 1906. Baudouin eventually moved back to his native village in the Vendée, dedicating himself to studying its prehistory and amassing an archive of a different sort. The Concilium had the most longevity, remaining in operation until 1940.
161. The name is Baudouin's own. See his "Le probleme bibliographique" (ref. 91), 711.
162. Despite nearly identical names, Baudouin's Institut and the Belgian Institut were distinct. On the IIB's importation of Dewey into Europe, see Rayward's Universe of information (ref. 29) and "The early diffusion abroad of the Dewey Decimal Classification: Great Britain, Australia, Europe", in G. Stevenson and J. Kramer-Greene (eds), Melvil Dewey: The man and the classification (Lake Placid, 1983), 149-73.
163. It was Field's enterprise that was most directly threatened by the Royal Society's new cataloguing venture. Their failure to find a means of combining their efforts is part of a larger story, but see the correspondence involving Field in the International Catalogue Correspondence (MS 531, Archives of the Royal Society).
164. See, e.g., Robert Fox, "Science, the university, and the state in nineteenth-century France", in G. Geison (ed.), Professions and the French state, 1700-1900 (Philadelphia, 1984), 66-146;
165. and Alan Rocke, Nationalizing science: Adolphe Wurtz and the battle for French chemistry (Cambridge, 2001).
166. "La seconde Conférence Bibliographique Internationale de Bruxelles en 1897", Revue scientifique, lx (1897), 236.