The Board 2017-2021 of the Commission on Bibliography and Documentation was appointed in São Paulo at the 2017 Congress of the IUHPS Division of History of Science and Technology.
President and Archival specialist: Gavan McCarthy
Vice-president for Bibliography: Stephen P. Weldon
Vice-President for Narrative Integration: Venkat Srinivasan
Treasurer and Library specialist: Birute Railiene
Secretary: Silvia Waisse
2013-2017
From left: Gavan McCarthy (Vice President for Archives), Silvia Waisse (Secretary), Birute Railiene (President), Stephen Weldon (Vice President for Bibliography), Amy Rodgers (Treasurer). (Picture by Helen Morgan.)
The Board 2013-2017 of the Commission on Bibliography and Documentation was appointed in Manchester 2013 at the Congress of the IUHPS Division of History of Science and Technology.
President: Birute Railiene
Secretary: Silvia Waisse
Vice-president for Bibliography and Treasurer: Stephen P. Weldon Vice-president for Archives: Gavan McCarthy
2009-2013
The Board 2009-2013 of the Commission on Bibliography and Documentation was appointed in Budapest 2009 at the Congress of the IUHPS Division of History of Science and Technology.
President (2009-2011): Roberto de Andrade Martins
President (2011-2013): Birute Railiene
Secretary: Silvia Waisse
Vice-president for Bibliography: Stephen P. Weldon
Vice-president for Archives: Gavan McCarthy
The Board, conducted most of activities via email and Skype, however three members of the Board were able to meet in person in Athens 2012 at the 5th European Society for the History of Science conference. It was at this meeting that the President, Vice-President for Bibliography and the Vice-President for Archives mapped out a new plan for the activities of the Commission.
2005-2009
President:
Peter Harper
National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Science
University of Bath, United Kingdom
2001-2005
President:
Peter Harper
National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Science
University of Bath, United Kingdom
It was during this period that Secretary General of the Division of History of Science, Professor Dr Juan José Saldaña, embarked on a reform process to modify the structure of the DHS with one consequence being the renaming of the DHS as the Division of History of Science and Technology.
In addition and acting in concurrence with other International Council of Scientific Union family members that he launched in 2002 a innovative, proactive scientific initiative to carry out the“Online Dictionary of National History of Sciences Bibliographies and Archival Sources” project. The vision for the project involved in its initial stages all IUHPS/DHS(T) members (49 National Scientific Members, 13 Scientific Commissions and 3 Scientific Sections) as well as the International Scientific Unions with which the Division held joint programs (International Unions of Astronomy, Mathematics, Geography, Geological Sciences and Soil Sciences).
Professor Saldaña confirmed the participation of a UNESCO family member, the Conseil International de la Philosophie et des Sciences Humaines (CIPSH) which allocated a grant to the project. In addition, internationally recognized academic institutions such as the Maison de Sciences de l’Homme (MSH, Paris) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) have already committed their support for the project’s technological infrastructure and it was hoped that support of other private international corporations would also be forthcoming.
On 4-6 April 2003, Professor Saldaña chaired the Expert Committee Meeting for the “Online Dictionary of National History of Sciences Bibliographies and Archival Sources” at the Maison de Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, France. The final resulotion of this meeting was that the project be renamed the “World history of Science Online: databases of bibliographic and archival sources.”
In a letter of 28 November 2003 Professor Saldaña announced the formation of a Technical Committee for the project. A document listing the initial members of both the Expert Committee and Technical Committee is attached below.
In April 2004, Professor Saldaña, the project coordinator in an attempt to collect better data as to the extent of the project distributed a ‘Survey on the current extent of bibliographical and archival sources cataloguing activity in the DHS’. A copy of the survey form can be found below. The following year, in March 2005 a web site for the project was launched at http://www.dhs-whso.org/. The Internet Archive has a record of the site and this can be found at:
A project proposal was submitted to the ICSU Grant Programme in 2004 which included funding for a ‘World Scientific Bibliography Symposium: Applications in Historical Research, Science Education and Studies on Science and Cultural Diversity’ to be held at the 22nd International Congress on History of Science in Beijing, China, 24-30 July 2005.
1997-2001
This Board was elected at the History of Science Congress in Liege, Belgium in 1997.
President:
Roderick W. Home
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3052, Australia
Secretary:
Henry Lowood
Stanford University Libraries
Stanford, CA 94305-6004, USA
1993-1997
President:
Roderick W. Home
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3052, Australia
Recollection from Rod Home:
‘At the International Congress of the History of Science at Zaragosa in Spain in July (or perhaps August) 1993, I found myself in a meeting – I can’t remember how they engineered it – with the then president of DHS, Bill Shea, and the then presidents of the Commissions of Bibliography and Documentation, respectively Renato Mazzolini (Mlle d’Alvergny being dead by this time) and Nate Reingold, who jointly put the proposition to me that the two Divisions should be merged into a single Commission on Bibliography and Documentation, and that I should become president of this.’
‘I still can’t understand how they conned me into doing so, but I agreed to the deal. And so during the final business meeting of the DHS at that Congress, the merger of the two Commissions was put up as a recommendation from the Executive and agreed to, and I was then elected president of the resulting merged body.’
