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Abstract

In Information and Intrigue Colin Burke tells the story of one man's plan to revolutionize the world's science information systems and how science itself became enmeshed with ideology and the institutions of modern liberalism. In the 1890s, the idealistic American Herbert Haviland Field established the Concilium Bibliographicum, a Switzerland-based science information service that sent millions of index cards to American and European scientists. Field's radical new idea was to index major ideas rather than books or documents. In his struggle to create and maintain his system, Field became entangled with nationalistic struggles over the control of science information, the new system of American philanthropy (powered by millionaires), the politics of an emerging American professional science, and in the efforts of another information visionary, Paul Otlet, to create a pre-digital worldwide database for all subjects. World War I shuttered the Concilium, and postwar efforts to revive it failed. Field himself died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Burke carries the story into the next generation, however, describing the astonishingly varied career of Field's son, Noel, who became a diplomat, an information source for Soviet intelligence (as was his friend Alger Hiss), a secret World War II informant for Allen Dulles, and a prisoner of Stalin. Along the way, Burke touches on a range of topics, including the new entrepreneurial university, Soviet espionage in America, and further efforts to classify knowledge.

Content

Raising a perfectly modern HerbertAn unexpected library revolution, at an unexpected place, by an unusual young fellow -- The great men at Harvard and Herbert's information "calling" -- Challenging the British "Lion" of science information -- New information ideas in Zurich, not Brooklyn or Paris -- Starting an information revolution and business, the hard way -- Big debts, big gamble, big building, big friends, a special librarian -- Lydia's other adventurous boy, family responsibilities, to America with hat in hand, war -- From information to intrigue, Herbert, WWI, a young Allen Dulles -- Returning to a family in decline, meeting with the liberal establishment -- To the centers of science and political power, and a new information world -- More conflicts between old and new science -- Wistar and the Council's abstracts vs. Field's elegant classification, round 1 -- A Concilium without Herbert Field, Nina and the Rockefeller's great decisions -- A voyage home and the Council's vision for world science vs. the Concilium, round 2 -- The information consequences of "capitalism's disaster" and the shift to applied science information -- The 1930's ideological journey of the Fields and their liberal friends -- Intrigue begins, in Switzerland, England, and Cambridge -- New loves, a family of agents, science information in war, librarians stealing books?, Soviet espionage without cost -- Looking forward to more intrigue, the postwar stories of big science, big information, and more ideology.

LCSH

Classification / Books / Science

Subject

Classification / Books / Science

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Content

Introduction -- 1. The Libraries of Babel -- 2. The Dream of the Labyrinth -- 3. Belle Epoque -- 4. The Microphotic Book -- 5. The Index Museum -- 6. Castles in the Air -- 7. Hope, Lost and Found -- 8. Mundaneum -- 9. The Collective Brain -- 10. The Radiated Library -- 11. The Intergalactic Network -- 12. Entering the Steam -- Conclusion.

LCSH

Classification / Books

Subject

Classification / Books

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Content

Cover -- Contents -- Introduction -- Alphabetical List of Entries -- Thematic List of Entries -- Contributors -- PART ONE -- 1. Premodern Regimes and Practices -- 2. Realms of Information in the Medieval Islamic World -- 3. Information in Early Modern East Asia -- 4. Information in Early Modern Europe -- 5. Networks and the Making of a Connected World in the Sixteenth Century -- 6. Records, Secretaries, and the European Information State, circa 1400-1700 -- 7. Periodicals and the Commercialization of Information in the Early Modern Era -- 8. Documents, Empire, and Capitalism in the Nineteenth Century -- 9. Nineteenth-Century Media Technologies -- 10. Networking: Information Circles the Modern World -- 11. Publicity, Propaganda, and Public Opinion: From the Titanic Disaster to the Hungarian Uprising -- 12. Communication, Computation, and Information -- 13. Search -- PART TWO -- Alphabetical Entries -- Glossary -- Index.