Pamela Spence Richards – författare

This book describes how the growing awareness of the strategic importance of science in the 1930s caused the Allied and German leadership to build scientific information supply systems that survived into the postwar era. Using archival materials from five countries, Richards traces the successes and failures of these early scientific intelligence agencies. She focuses on the OSS unit supplying copy for the US government's wartime program to reprint current German scientific journals. She describes as well the methods used by the OSS to spirit individual journal issues from inside the Reich to microfilm squads on Germany's periphery, and gives special attention to the Allied quest for information about the mythical German atomic bomb. Richards also describes the supply system set up by the Nazi government, and how its increasing desperation for Allied scientific news led in the last year of the war to a submarine landing of Abwehr agents on the U.S. coast to microfilm periodicals at the New York Public Library. The final chapter of her book looks at how the wartime experience with scientific information influenced postwar patterns of scientific documentation and librarianship in each country.

A broad, comparative history of librarianship, this intriguing work goes beyond the standard focus on institutions and collections to help you explore the part modern librarianship played—and continues to play—in forming Western cultures.Previous histories of libraries in the Western world—the last of which was published nearly 20 years ago—concentrate on libraries and librarians. This book takes a different approach. It focuses on the practice of librarianship, showing you how that practice has contributed to constructing the heritage of cultures. To do so, this groundbreaking collection of essays presents the history of modern librarianship in the context of recent developments of the library institution, professionalization of librarianship, and innovation through information technology. Organized by region, the book addresses the widely recognized, international impact of Anglo-American librarianship and its continuing influence over the past century, combining critical analysis with chronological histories of modern librarianship in Europe, North America, Australia/New Zealand, and Africa. An introductory chapter explains the origins of the project, and a concluding chapter examines the effects of digitization on modern librarianship in the 21st century.

A broad, comparative history of librarianship, this intriguing work goes beyond the standard focus on institutions and collections to help you explore the part modern librarianship played—and continues to play—in forming Western cultures.Previous histories of libraries in the Western world—the last of which was published nearly 20 years ago—concentrate on libraries and librarians. This book takes a different approach. It focuses on the practice of librarianship, showing you how that practice has contributed to constructing the heritage of cultures. To do so, this groundbreaking collection of essays presents the history of modern librarianship in the context of recent developments of the library institution, professionalization of librarianship, and innovation through information technology. Organized by region, the book addresses the widely recognized, international impact of Anglo-American librarianship and its continuing influence over the past century, combining critical analysis with chronological histories of modern librarianship in Europe, North America, Australia/New Zealand, and Africa. An introductory chapter explains the origins of the project, and a concluding chapter examines the effects of digitization on modern librarianship in the 21st century.