Evan Jay Crane
Evan Jay Crane (1899-1966) forged the 'key to the world's chemical literature'...organized, along with the help of Dr. Patterson, and weld[ed] chemical information into a discipline...was devoted to bettering [scientists'] science by bettering their access to it.
Life
From 1914 to 1958, Crane served as editor of Chemical Abstracts, the leading abstract journal in the field of science (largely due to its "effective indexing of chemistry"). Crane was the first director of the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) from 1956 to 1958.
Crane started the List of Periodicals Abstracted by Chemical Abstracts in 1908 to help the user identify the complete titles of materials cited by abbreviations and to provide the user with a list of publishers and addresses for the abstracted material.
Contributions
Crane published numerous articles on abstracting, indexing and documentation activities. He changed the indexing system of Chemical Abstracts from word indexing to classified subject entry. He developed a unified system of chemical nomenclature.
Publications
- A Guide to Literature of Chemistry (1927) with Austin Patterson
- "Scientist Share And Serve." [The Priestley Medal Address]. Chemical & Engineering News Archive 1951, 29, no 42 (Oct 15, 1951): 4250-4253. [1]
Offices
- American Chemical Society. Committee on Nomenclature, Spelling, and Pronunciation, Chairman 1914-58. *Mayor of Upper Arlington, Ohio, 1924.
Awards
- American Chemical Society. Priestley Medal, 1951. [2]
- American Chemical Society. Patterson Award, 1963. Renamed Patterson-Crane award, 1975.
- Society of Chemical Industry of London. Chemical Industry Medal, 1937.
- Ohio State University. Honorary Doctor of Science, 1953.
Further reading
- Dikeman, Robert K. "Crane, Evan Jay (1889-1966)." Dictionary of American library biography, ed. by Bohdan S. Wynar. Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1978, pp 100-102.
- "1951: Evan J. Crane (1889–1966)." Chemical & Engineering News Special Issue – 85th Anniversary Of The Priestley Medal. 86, no 14 (April 7, 2008). [3].
Papers
LOCATION #1: CAS Library, 2540 Olentangy River Road, P.O. Box 3012, Columbus, OH 43210-0012.
INCLUDES: Papers and correspondence are housed in an off-site facility of CAS. None of the papers have been processed or indexed but this is considered a temporary status since in the future CAS is looking to organize the archives. Anyone interested in examining Crane's papers should notify the CAS librarian who can retrieve the papers within a day or two from the off-site storage.
FINDING AID: None available at this time.
SOURCE: Letter from W. V. Metanomski, Senior Editor, Authority Database Operations, CAS (25 June 1996).
- Smithsonian Institution Archives, Accession 90-105, Science Service Records, Image No. SIA2008-0684. [4]