The 25 contributions to this volume, largely reprinted from recent special issues of three information science journals devoted to historical topics, address an array of topics including Paul Otlet and his successors; techniques, tools, and systems; organizations and individuals; theoretical issues; and literature. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

SCIENCE AND EMPIRES: FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM TO THE BOOK Patrick PETITJEAN, Catherine JAMI and Anne Marie MOULIN The International Colloquium "Science and Empires - Historical Studies about Scientific De velopment and European Expansion" is the product of an International Colloquium, "Sciences and Empires - A Comparative History of Scien tific Exchanges: European Expansion and Scientific Development in Asian, African, American and Oceanian Countries". Organized by the REHSEIS group (Research on Epistemology and History of Exact Sciences and Scientific Institutions) of CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), the colloquium was held from 3 to 6 April 1990 in the UNESCO building in Paris. This colloquium was an idea of Professor Roshdi Rashed who initiated this field of studies in France some years ago, and proposed "Sciences and Empires" as one of the main research programmes for the The project to organize such a colloquium was a bit REHSEIS group. of a gamble. Its subject, reflected in the title "Sciences and Empires", is not a currently-accepted sub-discipline of the history of science; rather, it refers to a set of questions which found autonomy only recently. The terminology was strongly debated by the participants and, as is frequently suggested in this book, awaits fuller clarification.

Historical Information Science is an extensive review and bibliographic essay, backed by almost 6,000 citations, detailing developments in information technology since the advent of personal computers and the convergence of several social science and humanities disciplines in historical computing. Its focus is on the access, preservation, and analysis of historical information (primarily in electronic form) and the relationships between new methodology and instructional media, techniques, and research trends in library special collections, digital libraries, data archives, and museums.

Emphasis for the second conference on the history of information science systems was on scientific and technical information systems in the period from the Second World War up through the early 1990s. These proceedings present the papers of historians of science and technology, information scientists, and scientists in other fields on a wide range of topics: informatics in chemistry; biology and medicine; information developments in multinational, industrial, and military settings; biographical studies of pioneering individuals; and the transformation of information systems and formats in the twentieth century.

The first article in this volume, by Tetu Hirosige, is a definitive study of the genesis of Einstein's theory of relativity. Other articles treat topics—theoretical, experimental, philosophical, and institutional—in the history of physics and chemistry from the researches of Laplace and Lavoisier in the eighteenth century to those of Dirac and Jordan in the twentieth century. Contents: The Ether Problem, the Mechanistic World View, and the Origins of the Theory of Relativity (Tetu Hirosige); Kinstein's Early Scientific Collaboration (Lewis Pyenson); Max Planck's Philosophy of Nature and His Elaboration of the Special Theory of Relativity (Stanley Goldberg); The Concept of Particle Creation before and after Quantum Mechanics (Joan Brombery); Chemistry as a Branch of Physics: Laplace's Collaboration with Lavoisier (Henry Guerlac); Mayer's Concept of "Force": The "Axis" of a New Science of Physics (P. M. Heimann); Debates over the Theory of Solution: A Study of Dissent in Physical Chemistry in the English-Speaking World in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (R. G. A. Dolby); The Rise of Physics Laboratories in Britain (Romualdas Sviedrys); The Establishment of the Royal College of Chemistry: An Investigation of the Social Context of Early-Victorian Chemistry (Gerrylynn K. Roberts) Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.