College and Research Libraries By E. M. R. DITMAS A Chapter Closes: Bradford, Pollard and Lancaster., Jones Miss Ditmas is director of ASLIB~ ant! managing editor of the Journal of Docu- mentation. "FIFTY YEARS OF DocuMENTATION" 1 is the title of one of the papers by the late Dr. Samuel Clement Bradford, published in I945· In a convenient phrase it describes that period of the history of bibliography during which "documentation" was born and came to maturity. It is, of course, true that documentation is far older than this catch phrase would suggest. If we define it as the aspect of bibliography in which the stress is laid most heavily on the develop- ment 6f aids to the active utilization of re- corded knowledge, as opposed to custodian- ship, we realize that it _has always been im- plicit in any scheme for the efficient ar- rangement of the materials of research. Nevertheless, in Europe at least, it can be claimed that the necessity for the -develop- ment of documentation as a technique first received widespread recognition through the pioneer zeal of Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, and with the foundation of the Office International de Bibliographie in Brussels in I895. Professor Alan Faraday Campbell Pol- lard's paper, "The Disordered State of Bibliography and Indications of Its Effect upon Scientific and Technical Progress ," 2 gives many examples of scientific discoveries 1 Bradford, ·s. 'C. "Fifty Years of 'Documentation." Proceedi ngs of the B.S.I.B., 7:43-51, 1945, Part 3. 2 Pollard, A. 'F. C. "The Disordered 'State of Bibliography and Indications of Its Effect upon Sci- entific and Technical Progress." Proceedings of the B.S.I.B., 4:41-52, 1942, Part 3· which were not utilized because their first publication occurred in journals which es- caped the attention of the specialists who could have appreciated their significance. But Pollard was echoing a theme which had been preached, in season and out, by Otlet and his friend and colleague, La Fontaine, since the close of the nineteenth century. For Paul Otlet specialization was a snare unless it could be coordinated into a frame- work of universality. «Il refutait tout par- ticularisme et cherchait d'avancer le col- lectivisme sous toutes ses formes .... L'ana- lyse ne lui servait que d'action preparatoire pour la synthese et la synthese finale c'etait pour lui l'idee mondiale.» 3 Otlet was not content with abstract ideas. He toiled un- ceasingly for the realization of his dreams in tangible form, for the creation of an in- ternational center which should include documents covering the whole range of hu- man activity-a vast library linked with an active information service. He realized, however, that such a service, and it was a service and not a mere depository that he was seeking to promote, presupposed a sys- tem by which the individual components of knowledge could be identified and selected from the integrated whole, and a "universal classification" had therefore to be devised for the use of scholars of all nations who would use the center. «La base de l'oeuvre projectee serait done la classification de la totalite des choses, la classification univer- selle. Cette classification serait la clef d'or 3 Duyvis, F. D. "Paul Otlet." F.I.D. Communica· tions, 12 :17, 1945. 332 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES .. cachee dans l'arbre de la connaisance et ouvrant laporte au vaste tresor de la pensee humaine.» 4 The space devoted to the faith of the Bel- gian pioneers is necessary if one is to ap- preciate rightly the contributions made by Dr. S.C. Bradford, Professor A. F. C. Pol- lard and Ernest Lancaster-Jones to prob- lems of organizing materials in British li- braries. Though British and European at- titudes to documentation now show distinc- tive characteristics, they stem from a com- mon source-the zeal of the founders of the Institut International de Bibliographie (now the Federation Internationale de Documentation), the Reportorium Biblio- graphicum U niversel~ and the Universal Decimal Classification (U.D.C.). This last was the name given to the "Brussels expansion" of the Decimal Classi- fication and Relative Index of Melvil Dewey. In their search for a "universal" classification to be used by the many dif- ferent countries cooperating in the supply of references to be fed into the center, Otlet and La Fontaine heard of the Dewey sys- tem, then unknown in Europe. A copy was received by them six weeks before the open- ing of the first International Bibliographi- cal Conference in I 89 5, and in this short time Otlet and La Fontaine reclassified the 400,000 cards they had already collected, in order to demonstrate the value of the classi- fication to members of the conference. Bradford Of the trio with which this article is con- cerned Bradford was the first to come under the influence of the Belgian pioneers. He was so impressed by the potential value of the U.D.C. that, to quote his own words, "in I900, as a junior of some I8 months' experience" · after joining the staff of the Science Museum, South Kensington, Lon- don, he had "the impudence to propose to 4 Ibid. OCTOBER~ 1949 use the Universal Decimal Classification for the Library subject-catalogue." 5 His suggestion was turned down, but for the rest of his life he was a determined apostle of the U .D. C. It was the mainspring of most of his written contributions to bibliog- raphy. For Bradford, documentation and the U.D.C. were synonymous. Pollard's contacts with the U.D.C. seem to have begun a little later when, hearing of the work of the Institut International de Bibliographie, he visited Otlet and La Fon- taine at Brussels in 1908. Thereafter he too became one of the champions of the "universal classification" though, like Brad- ford, with little success at first. The Eng- lish mind is unsympathetic toward univer- salism, and Otlet's ideas, both in Britain and on the continent, were sneered at as grandiose and impractical. Nevertheless the seed was being sown and even in Britain there were some important successes, not- ably Pollard's achievement in persuading the Optical Society to adopt the classifica- tion. Pollard's introductory chapters to the book;6 published by the society in I 926 as a guide to the decimal index of the Tran- sactions of the Optical Society~ still stand as one of the most lucid descriptions of the U.D.C. By a coincidence of great importance for the future of documentation in Great Britain, the paths of Bradford and Pollard• crossed in I925 when Bradford, newly created deputy keeper of the Science M u- seum Library, came into contact with Pol- lard, then professor of optical engineering and instrument design at the Imperial Col- lege of Science. The two ardent cham- pions of the U.D.C. joined forces and in G Bradford, S. C. "Minutes of the 17th Annual General Meeting." Proceedings of the B.S.I.B., 6:117, 1945, Part 6. 6 Pollard, A. F. C. The Decimal Classification of the Institut International de Bibliographie. Partly Translated for the Formation and Use of a Uni- versal Bibliographical Repertory Concerning Optics, Light and Cognate Subjects. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1926, p. 109. 333 I927 formed the British Society for Inter- national Bibliography with Pollard as first president. To them was soon added Ernest Lancaster-Jones, assistant keeper in the Sci- ence Museum. He took on the work of honorary secretary of_ the society in I 929, an office which he held until he was made keeper, i.e. chief librarian, at the Science Museum Library in I938 in succession to Bradford when the latter retired. He thus directly inherited the tradition which had been built up by Bradford and which he maintained through the difficult war years until his ·untimely death in I945· From the first the new society had strong links with the European documentation movement, and acted as the British Com- mittee of the Institut International de Documentation, which the Institut Inter- national de Bibliographie had by then be- come. Indeed Pollard was president of the Institut from I927 to I93I and the society acted as "host" for the international confer- ences of the I.I.D. in Great Britain in i929 and I 938. It was very quickly realized that no real headway for.: the U.D.C. could be made in Great Britain until it could be made available in English, and in I 930 an English translation was sponsored by a joint committee of the British Society for International Bibliography (B.S. LB.) and the Association of Special Libraries and In- formation Bureau (A.S.L.I.B.). The task of the publication of the English edition was subsequently taken over by the British Standards Institution but both Pollard and Bradfor-d retained the closest touch with the editing. It was on this account that Brad- ford was a member of the International Commission of the U.D.C. and its chair- man at the I946 meetings in Paris and at the I947 gathering in Berne. The B.S.I.B., apart from being the British Committee of th~ Institut Interna- tional de Documentation, was also a center of British documentation in its own right. The work of the three leaders, though ow- ing much to continental inspiration in the first place , developed original characteristics. All three were scientists by training: Brad- ford was a chemist with particular interests in colloid chemistry, Pollard was a distin- guished physicist with early experience of medicine and aeronautics, and Lancaster- Jones was a mathematician who had re- ceived recognition as an expert in applied geophysics. None of them had received professional training as librarians and their interest in bibliography was practical, not academic. As practicing scientists they knew the waste and duplication which could arise through overlooked references. They saw bibliography as a tool and not as an end in itself. Belief in the efficacy of the U.D.C. as a tool was a bond of union between Bradford and Pollard in the -days of their early col- laboration. "The Inadequacy of the Alpha- betical Subject Index" 7 and "Systematic Subject Indexes to Periodical Volumes" 8 were joint papers given at the A.S.L.I.B. conferences in I930 and I932 respectively. The U .D.C. continued to be Bradford's main theme in many papers published in the Pr~ceetf.ings of the British Society for International Bibliography, started by him in I939· "For and Against the Decimal Classification," 9 "The Universal Decimal Classification: Its Origin, and Purpose, Structure and U se" 10 and "Some General Principles of a Bibliographical Classifica- tion Scheme, with Application to the U ni- 7 Pollard, A. F. C., and 'Bradford, S. 'C. "The Inadeq uacy of the Alphabetical Subject 1ndex." Report of Proceedings of the Seventh Conference (of Aslib). I9JO, p. J9·49· 8 Bradford, S . C., and Pollard, 'A. F. C. '"Systematic Subject Indexes to Periodical Volumes." Report of Proceedings of the Ninth Conference (of Aslib). 1932, p. 2'0·JO . 9 Bradford, 'S. C. ..Fo r and Against the Decimal Classification." Proceedings of the B.S.I.B. 4:76-90, I 942, Part 4· lO Bradford, S. 'C. "The Universal Decimal Classi- fication: 'Its Origin and Purpose, Structure and Use." Pro ceedings of the B.S.I.B ., 6 ::n-36, 1944. 'Part I. 334 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES versal Decimal Classification"11 are charac- teristic. Nevertheless his other contributions to British documentation should not be for- gotten, particularly that which has come to be known as "Bradford's law of scattering." Early in I930 he investigated the degree to which articles on specific subjects are scat- tered throughout journals which are not primarily concerned with the subject in question. The Science Museum Library offered a field for experiment and the re- sulting formula was first published in En- gin eering on Jan. 26, I934. 12 This he elaborated at intervals, and his theory oc- cupies a chapter in his book Docum enta- tion /3 published in I948 a few weeks be- fore his death. The theory received further attention in connection with investigations into the reading habits of scientists carried out for the Royal Society' s Scientific Infor- . mation Conference of I948. Still more re- cently the mathematical formula has been confirmed in a paper by B. C. Vickery pub- lished in the ] ournal of Docum entation.14 A s keeper of the Science Museum Li- brary, Bradford w as in the full stream of British bibliographical activity. He was a member of the A.S.L.I.B. Council from I932-43 and ·again from I946-48, and he took an active part in the A.S.L.I.B. con- ferences. He would have been a vice presi- dent of the new A slib which was for~ed by the amalagamation of A.S.L.I.B. and the B.S.I.B. He also contributed a paper15 to the Roy~l Society's Empire Scientific Con- ference in I 946. All this was in addition to his constant work with the Feder ation Internationale de Documentation. 11 Brad fo rd, S. 'C. " S ome 'General Principles of a B ibliogr aphical Classification S cheme, with Application to the Universal Decimal 'Classification ." Proceedings of the B .S. I. B ., 6:57-69, 1944, Par t 3 · 12 Bradfo r d, 'S . C . " 'Sou rces of I nfo r ma t ion on Specific ·S u bj ects." Engineering, p. 85, J an. 26, 1934. 1 3 Bradford, S . C. Documentation. London , 'Cr osby L ockwood & S on, L td., 1948, p. I s6. 14 V icker y , B. 1C. "B r adford's Law of S cattering." l01trnal of Documentation, 4 : 198-203, December 1948. 1 6 Bradford, S . 'C . "Complete 'Docu mentation ." Re- Port of the Royal Society Empire S cientific Conference, I : 729-38, 1946. OCTOBER, 1949 Pollard Pollard , as has already been shown, was an enthusiast for the U.D.C. because, like Otlet, he saw in it the key to unlock the world 's storehouse of information. To the end he remained one of the chief British ex- perts in its use and a faithful advocate of its v alue. Nevertheless his duties as a pro- fes sor in the Uni versity of London and his work as a research scientist left him less time to devote to bibliographical interests than was the case with Bradford. From I938 onward Pollard 's contributions to the literature of documentation are chiefly in the form of presidential addresses to the B.S.I.B. During this period he was less concerned with the U .D. C. as sucl~ thau w ith the development of his scheme for the " mobilization of knowled ge" th r ough an elabor ate network of national and inter- national abstracting and indexing bureaus. This idea had been put forward by him in a letter to the Tim es as early as I9I9, but received detailed treatment in such papers as "The Mobilization of Knowl- ed ge and the ' Permanent World Encyclo- paedia' of Mr. H. G. Wells" 16 and " A Proposed Plan for the Mobilization of Bibliographical References to the Contents of the World 's Non-Fiction Literature."17 This l ast paper was put forward by him again at the Royal Society's Scientific In- formation Conference in June I948 , a few weeks before his death. Pollard 's modifi- cation of Otlet's plan was in line with gen-· eral British reactions toward proposals for vast central information services. In I926 ]. G. Pearce, then chai r man of the coun- cil of A.S.L.I.B. , made the followin g re- mar ks at the third annual conference of that 1G Po ll ard, A. 'F. 'C. " T he Mobili zation of Know l-· edge and the 'Permanent World Encyclopaedia' of Mr. H. G. Wells." Transactions of the r4th Con- ference of the International Federation for Documenta- tion, 2 :'Cr6r-67, 1938 . 17 Pollard, A . F. C. "A Proposed 'P lan for t h e Mobi li zation of B ibliogr aphical R eferences to the Con- tents of the V.' orld's on-Fiction Litera ture ." Pro- ceedings of the B.S.I .B., s : 55-73 , 1943, Part 3· 335 organization: "There are two main objec- tions in English eyes to all completely cen- tralized international schemes of the Brus- sels type. . In the first place the cost both for capital expenditure and running ex- penses is enormous ; in the second place there is a strong feeling that centralization on a large scale defeats the object in view, which is ready availability of material to the in- quirer." 18 However much Pollard may have admired Otlet and his idea for the Palais Mondiale it was becoming clear that the First World War had fatally under- mined the atmosphere of confidence in the free exchange of information between scien- tists which was a prerequisite for the suc- cess ot a comprehensive central service. The Second World War, though it in- creased the need for the organization of information, made it still clearer that each nation claimed to control the flow of any information considered important from the security point of view. Pollard envisaged a scheme which, since the exchange of in- formation could be controlled at source, would be more practical in modern condi- tions. The scheme, in its original form, would have been very expensive and post- war conditions make its early realization unlikely. Lancast er-] ones Lancaster-Jones belonged to a later gen- eration and he was therefore less closely af- fected by the early phases of the Otlet- La Fontaine fer vor. His transference from the Science Museum to the Science Museum Library in 1928 brought him into direct contact with Bradford and, inevitably, linked him with the activities of the B.S.I.B. of which he became vice president in 1945 , the year when Bradford succeeded Pollard as president. He took a full part in inter- 18 P ea r ce, T. G . ••A Nat ional 'Intelligence S ervice." Report of the Proceedings of the T hird Conference (of Aslib) . 1926, p. IIS-21 . national bibliographical meetings, both of the Federation Internationale de Documen- tation and of the Federation Internationale des Associations Bibliothecaires and , in par- ticular, he was responsible for the reports of the F.I.A.B. subcommittee on special li- braries and information centers which were published in the A ctes du Comite Int erna- tional des Bibliotheques from 1936 to 1939. He became an expert in the use of the U.D.C. and took a considerable part in the editing of the English edition. His first bibliographical paper was on "The Decimal Classification in England," 19 prepared for the Congresso Mondiale delle Bibliotecha e di Bibliografia i~ Rome in I 929. He was a member of the A.S.L.I.B. Council fr~m 1937-45 and its treasurer from 1942 until his death. Lancaster-Jones' approach to bibliog- raphy was strongly influenced by the mathe- matical trend of his intellect. He made valuable statistical investigations into the number of scientific papers published, the number of abstracts made of different papers, etc., the results of which provided the data from which Bradford deduced his law of scattering and were reflected in his own papers such as "Evaluation of Scien- tific and Technical Pe riodicals," 20 or "Searching t he Literature of Science. " 21 The technique of the administration of. a special library appealed to his essentially practical nature and he was very much alive to the importance of such auxiliary aids as microfilm and other forms of document re- production. In connection with the Four- teenth International Conference on Docu- mentation held at London and O xford in 1938, he organized an exhibition of micro- 19 L a ncaster-'J ones, E . " T he D ecimal Classification in England ." Atti del lmo Congresso Mondiale delle B ibliotecha e di Bibliografia, vol. 2. 20 Lancast er -Jones, E. " E valuation of S cien tific and T echni cal 'P eriodicals." R eport of Proceedings of the F ifteenth Conf erence (of A slib). 1938, p. 72-81. 21 Lancast er-Jones , E. '"S earching the Literatur e of Science." Journal of Scientific Instruments, 1 7 !253-57, 1940. 336 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES film readers at the Science Museum. His position as keeper of the Science Museum Library during the war brought him into close contact with the Aslib Microfilm Serv- ice to which he acted as treasurer and un- official adviser. "Microfilm in Libraries" 22 and "The Operation of a Microfilm Serv- ice" 23 show his interest in this subject. The responsibilities of keeping the Science Mu- seum · Library functioning as a live center of information during the war absorbed more and more of his energy and the list of his published papers on bibliographical sub- jects is not long. By his premature death in I945 British documentation undoubtedly had a great loss. The measure of the contribution made by these three men to the understanding of problems of organizing information services in libraries can best be assessed if we com- pare the general expectation of what a li- brary service should provide in I goo and in I 949· The library is no longer a deposi- tory, but is now a recognized center for the 22 Lancaster-Jones, 'E. '"Microfilm in Librar ies." Report of Proceedings of the Seventeenth Conferen ce (of Aslib). 1942, p. 34-37. 23 Lancaster-Jones, E. "The Operation of a Micro- film Service." Proceedings of the B.S.I.B., s :1-6, 1943, Part 1. OCTOBER, 1949 active provision of information. The proc- essing of scientific ·data so that it may be ac- cessible to the widest possible circle in in- dustry and research is now the responsibility of governments, and the search for efficient schemes of classification is a matter of in- terest far beyond the ranks of the profes- sional librarian. All these changes have taken place in the last 50 years. The gen- eration of the pioneers is passing but as we close the chapter which records the achieve- ments of such men as ]. G. Priestley, the physiologist, editor of Physiological A b- stracts and secretary of the International Secretariat for Physiology of the Commis- sion of the U.D.C., Leonard C. Wharton, the British Museum expert on Slavonic studies and problems of transliteration , William Macnab and W. P. Dreaper, chemical engineers and collaborators in the foundation of the Central Agricultural and Scientific Bibliography, all late members of the B.S.I..B., we pay special tribute to the exertions and undaunted perseverance of the three outstanding figures in that company- Samuel Clement Bradford, Al~n Faraday Campbell Pollard and Ernest Lancaster- Jones. 337