Abstract
The 1890s saw an explosion of ambitious projects to build a massive classification of knowledge that would serve as a basis for universal catalogues of scientific publishing. The largest of these were the rival International Catalogue of Scientific Literature (London) and Répertoire Bibliographique Universel (Brussels). This essay argues that one widely influential but overlooked source of the enthusiasm for classification as a technology of search and retrieval during this period was the emergence of new methods and technologies for classifying and keeping track of people, and in particular, the criminal identification laboratory of Alphonse Bertillon located in Paris.
Highlights
Published Version Citable link Terms of UseBibliography as Anthropometry: Dreaming Scientific Order at the fin de siècle
John Shaw Billings, the doctor, medical bibliographer, and founding director of the New York Public Library, traveled to London in July 1896 to head the American delegation at the first of a series of London conferences to build an International Catalogue of Scientific Literature
While police in other cities had developed routines for recording the physical traits and peculiarities of criminals, what was important about Bertillon’s system was that he developed a scheme of classification that allowed, in principle, for speedy retrieval of records
Summary
Bibliography as Anthropometry: Dreaming Scientific Order at the fin de siècle.
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