Heather Ellis; Ulrike Kirchberger (Editors). Anglo-German Scholarly Networks in the Long Nineteenth Century. (History of Science and Medicine Library, 43; Knowledge Infrastructure and Knowledge Economy, 4.) xii + 237 pp., illus., bibl., index. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014. €104 (cloth).

Isis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 107 (1) ◽  
pp. 204-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Schalenberg
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Knowledge Infrastructure ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scholarly Networks

A Well-Ordered Thing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Gordin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Periodic Table ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Classic Work ◽  
Hot Air ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time

Dmitrii Mendeleev (1834–1907) is a name we recognize, but perhaps only as the creator of the periodic table of elements. Generally, little else has been known about him. This book is an authoritative biography of Mendeleev that draws a multifaceted portrait of his life for the first time. As the book reveals, Mendeleev was not only a luminary in the history of science, he was also an astonishingly wide-ranging political and cultural figure. From his attack on Spiritualism to his failed voyage to the Arctic and his near-mythical hot-air balloon trip, this is the story of an extraordinary maverick. The ideals that shaped his work outside science also led Mendeleev to order the elements and, eventually, to engineer one of the most fascinating scientific developments of the nineteenth century. This book is a classic work that tells the story of one of the world's most important minds.

scholarly journals Building infrastructure in the digital age: case study of the Isis Bibliography of History of Science, 2002-2018

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Stephen P. Weldon
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Knowledge Infrastructure ◽  
Digital Resource ◽  
History Of ◽  
Networking Technologies ◽  
Digital Knowledge ◽  
Historical Methods ◽  
Knowledge Ecology

The IsisCB Explore went online in 2015 as a foundational digital resource for historians of science. Built on the History of Science Society’s 100-year-old Isis Bibliography of the History of Science, this service is meant to lay the groundwork for a digital infrastructure to support historical work in the relatively new digital environment where so much modern scholarship now takes place. In order to create this resource, the director of the project, Stephen Weldon, has learned how to shape traditional historical methods, practices, and resources to fit the new digital paradigm. Computer and networking technologies have been built out of the needs and practices of technologists, natural scientists, and business innovators, all of whom employ it in very specific ways, quite different from the practices of humanistic scholarship, and history in particular. As a result, the digital environment is not especially friendly to historical work or products. As a result, it has taken a great deal of effort to understand and refactor historical data so that it functions well within a digital knowledge ecology, a “knowledge infrastructure,” as Christine Borgman refers to it. This paper describes the difficulties (epistemological, cultural, and economic) that make the creation of tools like the IsisCB Explore service challenging for historians and suggests some ways forward.

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