Dr. Birutė Railienė,b.railiene@gmail.com

The Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences

26th Baltic Conference in History of Science 'Science as Profession'Helsinki, August 21- 22, 2014 

The art of BiographyIs different from Geography.Geography is about maps.But Biography is about chaps

Edmund Clerihew Bentley, Biography for Beginners (1905)

http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/bentley1.html

Bibliography is about books, articles...

later – about all published, and now – about all accesible information, relevant to the index

Bibliography for a person

[institution, branch of science, idea, etc.]

is a starting point to know, a way of conduct, a source for study,

an instrument to commemorate

Methodology of personal bibliographical index

Tradition (institution, copiler, publisher) Qualification (compiler) Conception (compiler, person of interest)

Biography Selected works Memoirs Bibliography of records

◦ By person◦ Iconography◦ About person

Name index

A scholar His/hers pupils, followersHistorians of scienceScience policy makers

Documenting a personal scholarly input provides data for:

Social network Institutional datasets Archive Bibliography

Isolation from the frontier sourcfes of information

Relying on secondary information sources Selection of material

Personal bibliography by country (national library OPAC, UDK – 012)

Estonia 351 (data by Mare Kurvet) Latvia (data missing) Lithuania 818 (LNB.lt)

Institutional scientific reports - NO An attachemnt to a CV - NO An index to a file of copies? – NO Prosopography – YES, and even more

Prosopograhy – a study that identifies and relates a group of persons or characters within a particular historical or literary context (Merriam-Webster dictionary)

Prosopography is based on structured biographical data; it should not be confused with biography.

Prosopograhy embodies bibliographical data with the links to documents (original, digital, etc.)

Prosopograhy reports all the information on such persons that is contained in the different sources (such as chronicles, letters, saints' lives, legal documents as well as other texts like inscriptions and seals) and lists the respective sources (Prosopography of the Middle-Byzantine Period)

http://telota.bbaw.de/pmbz/

http://prosopography.modhist.ox.ac.uk/tutorial/tutorial_1.htm

: contributions of mediaevalists and modernists on the use of computer in historical research.

Garant, 1995 - 218 p.

http://www.personendaten.org/

http://www.personendaten.org/

Bibliography – the basis of international intellectual cooperation (EC Richardson, 1939) – still

Bibliography – the basis of international intellectual cooperation (EC Richardson, 1939) – still

Personal bibliography – instrument to draw a historical portrait of a person, institution, field of science

Bibliography – the basis of international intellectual cooperation (EC Richardson, 1939) – still

Personal bibliography – instrument to draw a historical portrait of a person, institution, field of science

Bibliography – the basis of international intellectual cooperation (EC Richardson, 1939) – still

Personal bibliography – instrument to draw a historical portrait of a person, institution, field of science

Personal bibliography – a core for prosopography in a history of science

Success of application – a thorough and precise bibliographical performance + scientific seeking

Additional information to the curious

Quod non est in actis, non est in mundo

What is not written, does not exist

Richardson, Ernest Cushing. Bibliography – the basis of international intellectual cooperation // Proceedings of the Second Convention of International American Bibliographical and Library Association. – New York, 1939, p. 42-49