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Cooperation on Archives of Science in Europe |
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Coopération pour les Archives Scientifiques en Europe |
NEWSLETTER No.1 August 1998
CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. SCIENTIFIC ARCHIVES SYMPOSIUM IN SWEDEN
3. HANNES ALFVÉN PROJECT
4. SOME CURRENT ITALIAN PROJECTS
5. BIBLIOGRAPHIE FRANCOPHONE
1. INTRODUCTION
This Newsletter seeks to further the goal of European cooperation in scientific archives by providing a forum for the exchange of news and information about a wide range of activities of interest to those working in the field. It may serve as the place to report informally on projects proposed, in progress and completed such as surveys, cataloguing projects and research projects on problems in the documentation of science, and provide news and information on meetings, exhibitions and publications.
This Newsletter is entirely made possible by the contributions of a number of colleagues most notably, Christina Jonsson and Karin Sterky of the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm for the report on their Hannes Alfvén project, Giovanni Paoloni of the Scuola Speciale per Archivisti e Bibliotecari in Rome for a report on some of the activities in Italy with which he is associated and Odile Welfelé of the CNRS in Paris for the bibliography of French language publications.
I should also like to thank my colleague Alan Hayward who is responsible for the CASE website and thus for the appearance of this Newsletter on the Web.
Assuming that colleagues feel that this Newsletter serves a real need and are willing to provide the necessary reports and news a second issue will appear on the Web in November.
Peter
Harper,
Director,
NCUACS,
University of Bath.
lispbh@bath.ac.uk
2. MANAGING THE ARCHIVES OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM ROYAL SWEDISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, STOCKHOLM, 18 APRIL 1998.
This symposium was organised to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Center for History of Science at the Academy. The history of science centre was established under the auspices of the Academy on 1 January 1988 'to accomplish, stimulate and support research within the field of the history of science, with particular emphasis being placed on the Academy's archives and collections'. Speakers were Finn Aaserud (Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen), 'Coordinating scientific archives work in a small country: the case of Denmark'; Jan Brunius (The National Archives, Stockholm), 'Historical Databases in Swedish National Archives'; Tomas Anfält (Carolina Rediviva, Uppsala University), 'Project Linnaeus - the editing of the Linnean correspondence'; Anna Christina Ulfsparre (Dept History, Stockholm University), 'What can Archival Science do for the History of Science?'; Peter Harper (NCUACS University of Bath), 'An overview of the work of the NCUACS on its 25th Anniversary'; Joseph Anderson (Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics), 'The International Catalog of Sources for the History of Physics and Allied Sciences: Development and Future Plans'.
3. HANNES ALFVÉN COLLECTION, A PROJECT AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY KTH, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN.
Hannes Alfvén
In 1970 Hannes Alfvén was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for 'his contributions and fundamental discoveries in magnetohydrodynamics and their fruitful applications in different areas of plasma physics' (i).
Hannes Alfvén was born on 30 May 1908 in the town Norrköping in the middle of Sweden. He went to Uppsala University to study mathematics, mechanics and physics. His doctoral thesis (1934) was "Ultra short Electromagnetic waves", his supervisor was Manne Siegbahn, who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1924. On 13 December 1940 Hannes Alfvén was appointed Professor in Electromagnetic Theory and Electric Measurements at the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH. His professorship changed in 1945 to Electronics and then to Plasma Physics in 1963. In 1967 Hannes Alfvén accepted a professorship at the University of California, San Diego. He retired in 1973 but was active more than a decade after that. He died on 2 April 1995.
In addition to his fundamental discoveries Hannes Alfvén made numerous important contributions to the physics of magnetosphere, especially auroras and magnetic storms, as well as to solar and interplanetary physics, astrophysics and cosmology. His best known discovery is the Alfvén waves. Hannes Alfvén realized that the magnetic fields observed in sunspots must derive from electric currents in the solar plasma, and that the currents and the magnetic fields together must give rise to forces that affect the motion of this plasma, which in turn induces electric fields. He formulated this mutual interaction and the resulting waves in mathematical form by 1942. Hannes Alfvén worked during a very interesting period in the history of physics and science generally. Contacts and collaboration with other scientists was increasing and scientific discussion and the exchange of ideas flourished. The role of the scientist was itself changing, for example leading to an organisation like Pugwash. In Sweden Alfvén was drawn into a debate about nuclear power and other sources of energy. Alfvén's research interests changed during his life and he always moved on. This led to the creation of new fields of physics and his ideas were sometimes controversal. Some of them have now been verified by other scientists.
The Project
The aim of the project is to present the work of Hannes Alfvén to History of Science, to scientists as well as to students as it is represented in documents, books and instruments (ii).
The project was discussed with Hannes Alfvén in in 1980s and he was specific about that all material representing his scientific work as well as the rest of his versatile life should be deposited and made available at KTH. Thanks to that we now have an almost complete collection. This project started in spring 1997 and in September we were able to engage one archivist and one assistant to collect and describe the material. The Alfvén laboratory has supported us with a lot help, especially when collecting objects which were essential in the work of Hannes Alfvén.
We are describing, registering and cataloguing all the material. Some of the manuscripts and correspondence is going to be scanned to make it available on the Web together with the catalogues. Links will be listed to other collections. We have a specially built, separate archive, with a study at the Alfvén Laboratory at KTH, where all the material will be kept.
An exhibition is planned and this will be integrated in the Alfvén Laboratory. As Hannes Alfvén was a man who always looked ahead it will not only show the past but it will also point forward and be a part of the scientific work that Hannes Alfvén has inspired.
Organisation
The project is led by a steering committee, chaired by Professor Svante Lindqvist, Museum Director of the Nobel Museum, the Nobel Foundation. A scientific council has been appointed consisting of Professor Carl-Gunne Fälthammar, Professor Nicolai Herlofson, Professor Bo Lehnert, Professor Olle Wernholm and Dr Lennart Lindberg at the Alfvén Laboratory. The project team consists of Christina Jonsson head of the project, Karin Sterky project secretary, Pontus Värmhed archivist and Katri Männistö project assistant.
The Collection
At the present time the Alfvén Collection consists of approximately 40 shelf metres of documents, a book collection of 20 shelf metres and about one hundred objects (most of them made of glass). The period represented is 1931-1992. Thanks to Alvén's family we have been able to acquire a lot of material to the collection. It was his wish that all the material should be kept in one place as far as possible.
The collection is kept in a specially built, separate archive, and we have made a thorough inventory. The inventory lists have been a base for the first preliminary finding aid. A register of Alfvén's publications have been made as well as of the objects. The next step is to arrange and catalogue the material according to international standards such as ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) and that the finding aid and registers are made available on the Web.
The documents show Hannes Alfvén in his work and all other activities. There are for example:
- correspondence with scientists from all around the world (c 1940-1992)
- manuscripts with comments, especially from his early scientific research
- the books Alfvén wrote, by himself and in collaboration with others
- articles, reports, abstracts
- research papers
- notebooks and photographs from his extensive travels
- a wide range of documents showing his interest in and concern for atomic power, nuclear weapons, peace movement (Pugwash), sources of energy, overpopulation and world famine
- press clippings
- Nobel prize diploma and medallion, honorary doctorates etc
- material concerning his collaborators and colleagues especially in Sweden and USA
- private papers such as photographs and diaries/journals
Hannes Alfvén's papers at the University of California, San Diego, have already been arranged and finding aids are available on the Web (iii). The collection of documents are almost complete and shows the work of the scientist and the teacher as well as of the man in society. The research potential of this material is therefore of great value.
The Alfvén collection will be presented at the ICA/SUV seminar at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm 3-4 september 1998.
Contact:
Christina Jonsson < chris@admin.kth.se>, IT avd, KTH, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden.
Karin Sterky <sterky@admin.kth.se>, Jur enh, KTH, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden
http://www.kth.se/CA/jue/arkiv/alfven.html
Footnotes
(i) http://www.plasma.kth.se/al/hannes.html
(ii) Carl-Gunne Fälthammar. Hannes Alfvén - the Life and Work of a Great Pioneer. TRITA-ALP-1998-02. ISBN 91-7170-251-2 (In Swedish)
(iii) http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/testing/html/mss0225e.html
4. SOME CURRENT ITALIAN PROJECTS
This report is an adaptation of information provided by Giovanni Paoloni earlier this year.
In 1991 the Italian archival community held a major conference on archives for the history of science and technology at Desenzano del Garda. As a follow-up to this a general survey of the Italian archives for the history of science is available on the Web at the following address:
http://www.albert.it/accademiaxl
There you will find a button "Archivi", you click on it, and find a page with a button "Census"; by clicking on this button you connect to a database containing information on some 200 archives kept at different institutions. This is a prototype product, which is currently being implemented with an English text, and by the update of data and entry of new data. A definitive version of the service will be available in December 1998, and from then on it will become an online information service for science archives existing in Italy, currently updated in cooperation with the Italian archival administration. This is at the moment the standard survey project for Italian archives and is the web product of Giovanni Paoloni's activity of the last ten years. It is being developed in the framework of the National Research Project on Cultural Heritage of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and is run at the Accademia Nazionale dei XL.
In a second project of Giovanni's a database of the correspondence of Italian scientists existing in various archives has been developed at the following address:
and is available by clicking on the hot words "Corrispondenze degli scienziati italiani"; by doing this you are connected to a research instrument performing searches on the analytical descriptions of letters and other correspondences exisiting in the personal archives of scientists of post-1860 Italy kept at the Accademia dei Lincei, Accademia Nazionale dei XL, Dipartimento di Fisica dell'Università "La Sapienza" in Rome; by April 1998 the data available concerned some 25,000 pieces of correspondence, and was being implemented with the entry of some other 25,000 analytical descriptions, already in digital form. By June 1998 it was planned to have at least 50,000 analytical descriptions on line. The version you consult is again a prototype, to be implemented by next October with English texts, and by larger query possibilities of the interface. The project is going to be updated with entries of new data from other archives, being inventoried and analytically described at different institutions.
In addition to these very impressive projects at the Accademia Nazionale dei XL and at the Accademia dei Lincei Giovanni is trying to develop a presentation of personal archives at both sites, conceived in this way: an inventory in hypertextual format, and at the end of the research, you can directly see the image of the records you are interested in. The prototype is being created for the Cannizzaro Papers at the Accademia Nazionale dei XL. If the results are good, the model will be extended to online research on the personal archives at the Accademia dei Lincei and the Dipartimento di Fisica as well. Giovanni is also involved in the Italian unit of the of the international research project on long term conservation of electronic records led by Luciana Duranti and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
BIBLIOGRAPHIE FRANCOPHONE
Articles et travaux de recherche
Guy BRAIBANT. Les Archives scientifiques, in Les archives en France. Rapport au Premier Ministre, p.35-36. Documentaion française, 1996.
Bruno DELMAS. Manifeste pour une diplomatique contemporaine. Des documents institutionnels à l'information organisée. Dans Gazette des archives, n°172, 1er trimestre 1996.
CAHIERS POUR L'HISTOIRE DU CNRS, 10 numéros. CNRS Editions, 1988-1990.
Claire ETIENNE. Les archives scientifiques contemporaines à l'Institut Pasteur. Réflexions et expériences de collecte et de classement. Mémoire de DESS "histoire et métiers des archives", sous la direction de Mme Valérie Poinsotte, Université d'Angers, 1996.
Michel MELOT. Des archives considérées comme une substance hallucinogène. Dans Traverses , n° 36, "L'Archive", 1986.
Christine NOUGARET. L'impact des technologies de l'information sur les archives et le travail de l'archiviste. Communication au XIIIe congrès international des archives (4e session plénière, rapport principal), Pékin, septembre 1996. Archives nationales, France.
Geoffrey NUNBERG. Les langues des sciences dans le discours électronique. Dans Alliage, n° 27, été 96.
Odile WELFELÉ. Guide de survie en milieu hostile. Les archives publiques : une espèce à protéger ? Dans Cahiers pour l'histoire du CNRS, 1939-1989. N° 3. Editions du CNRS, 1989.
Odile WELFELÉ. L'éprouvette archivée. Réflexions sur les archives et les matériaux documentaires issus de la pratique scientifique contemporaine. Dans Gazette des archives, n°163, 4e trimestre 1993.
Odile WELFELÉ. Archivistique et pratiques scientifiques contemporaines. Dans Culture et Recherche, n°44, octobre 1993.
Odile WELFELÉ;. La souris et l'encrier. Pratiques scientifiques et inscriptions documentaires. Dans Alliage, n°19, été 1994.
Odile WELFELÉ. Les archives scientifiques en France. Janus. 1995.2. International Council on Archives.
Odile WELFELÉ. Le patrimoine scientifique contemporain. Etude de sites de conservation d'archives en Grande-Bretagne. Etude réalisée en juin 1996 dans le cadre des missions spéciales "fonction publique", financées par la Fondation Nationale Entreprise et Performance. Rapport de mission non publié, octobre 1996.
Odile WELFELÉ. Quel archivage pour l'information scientifique en ligne? Dans Patrimoine et multimédia : le rôle du conservateur, colloque organisé les 23, 24 et 25 octobre 1996 par l'Ecole nationale du Patrimoine à la Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Documentation française, 1997.
Odile WELFELÉ. Quels matériaux pour l'historien d'après-demain? Réflexions prospectives sur le devenir des archives scientifiques. Dans les actes du séminaire Science et Archives contemporaines, organisé à l'Ecole nationale du Patrimoine, les 20, 21 et 22 novembre 1996 à Paris. Publication Ecole Nationale du Patrimoine, 117 boulevard Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris.
Odile WELFELÉ. Organiser le désordre: usages du cahiers de laboratoire en physique contemporaine. Dans L'écrit de la science, colloque organisé dans le cadre du Forum européen de la science et de la technologie de la commission européenne (DG XII), Nice, 12-14 mars. Alliage, N° 37-38, hiver 98-printemps 1999.
Colloques, Séminaires et journées d'études
Thérèse Charmasson (sous la direction de). Les archives scientifiques. Numéro spécial de la Gazette des archives. Journée d'études du 25 février 1988. N° 145, 2e trimestre 1989.
Communications présentées aux journées d'études organisées par le Centre de recherche en histoire des sciences et des techniques de la Cité des sciences et de l'industrie, le 19 mars 1993 « Préservation et utilisation des archives scientifiques » et le 9 février 1996 « Formes et contenus des documents : Pour une diplomatique des archives scientifiques », à paraître dans La Gazette des archives, nouvelle série, n° 177 (2e trimestre 1997).
Le patrimoine écrit scientifique et technique : Définition, usages et accessibilité. Actes du colloque, Roanne, 5-6 octobre 1993, colloque organisé par la ville de Roanne, la fédération française de coopération entre bibliothèques, l'agence Rhône-Alpes pour le livre et la documentation, Roanne, FFCB/ARALD/Bibliothèque municipale, 1994.
Catalogues et albums
CARPINE C. Catalogue des appareils d'océanographie en collection au Musée océanographique de Monaco. 4. Bouteilles de prélèvement d'eau. Dans Bulletin de l'Institut océanographique, vol. 75, n°1440, 1993, 175p.
Michel HENRI. Les instruments des sciences, Belgique, de Visscher, 1980.
MUSÉE DES ARTS ET MÉTIERS. L'album, Musée national des techniques, CNAM, 1990
Guides thématiques
Ghislaine BIDAULT. Les mémoires de la recherche. Etat des versements du ministère de la Recherche, 1977-1989. CNRS Editions, 1993.
Ghislaine BIDAULT, Catherine MOUNIER. Références archivistiques sur la recherche spatiale. Mission des Archives nationales du Secrétariat à la Recherche. Février 1996.
Ghislaine BIDAULT. Les recherches polaires au sein des administrations centrales. Recueil de textes. Mission des Archives nationales Recherche auprès du ministère de l'Education nationale, de la recherche et de la technologie. Octobre 1997.
Ghislaine BIDAULT. Références archivistiques sur les recherches polaires au sein des administrations centrales. Mission des Archives nationales Recherches auprès du ministère de l'Education nationale, de la recherche et de la technologie. Mars 1998.
Eric BRIAN et Christiane DEMEULENAERE (sous la direction de). Histoire et mémoire de l'Académie des sciences. Guide de recherches. Lavoisier, 1996.
Thérèse CHARMASSON, Christiane DEMEULENAERE, Catherine GAZIELLO, Denise OGILVIE. Les archives personnelles des scientifiques. Classement et conservation. Direction des archives de France, Archives nationales, 1995.
lispbh@bath.ac.uk
Last updated 21 August 2001
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