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Biographical Directory of Documentation and Information Science

About this project

This Biographical Directory of Documentation and Information Science is an international effort to document the lives and contributions of people and organizations who have made substantial contributions to the field.

This resource is designed to enable historical work in the field by identifying pioneering individuals and organizations significant to the development of Information Science, and providing locations of personal papers and archival records related to these individuals and organizations.

List of all pages.

DISCLAIMER: Note that most of the entries are stubs or otherwise need to be improved.

It also includes a list of known oral histories of information scientists.

History

"Pioneers of Information Science" was initiated by Dr. Robert V. Williams, Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, School of Library and Information Science, University of South Carolina in 1996. The objectives of that project were to locate and document the archives and personal papers of individuals and organizations from the U.S. and Canada that were significant to the development of Information Science and Technology in the 20th century.

→ Read more about the original project

From today’s featured article

Bernard M. Fry (far left)

Bernard Mitchell Fry (1915-1994) earned bachelor's degree in history in 1937 and a master's degree in political science in 1939 from Indiana University, Bloomington. He later received a master's degree in library science from Catholic University in 1952 and doctoral work at American University from 1958 to 1963.

Fry's first professional job was working as a librarian and instructor at Mary Washington College from 1939-1940. From 1941-1942 he served as Chief Bibliographer of the Legislative Reference Service at the Library of Congress. This was followed by work for the US Army Corps of Engineers on the Manhattan Project from 1942-1946. Fry worked for the Atomic Energy Commission from 1947-1955 as Chief Librarian for the Technical Information Service, and from 1956-1958 served as its Director. From 1959-1963, Fry served as the Deputy Head at the Office of Science Information Service of the National Science Foundation.

→ Read the full page

Contributions and Editorial Policies

We invite contributions from all members of the information science community. We especially seek international contributions. If you would like to write an entry, please read about the scope of the project and create a short article (a stub) that includes the individual or organization that you wish to nominate and submit it to the editors at biographicaleditor at gmail dot com.

See also our Manual of Style [1] and Article Template page.

The wiki is governed by an editorial board who hold all responsibility for the content of the project.

→ Read the full editorial policies