iCHSTM 2013 Programme • Version 5.3.6, 27 July 2013 • ONLINE (includes late changes)
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The history of science and information science: dialogues between George Sarton and Paul Otlet
Marcia Rosetto | University of São Paulo, Brazil

By the end of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th Century, international studies and events grow intensely as spaces for the reflection and definition of proposals about the ways of implementing bibliographic controls of the large documental volume worldwide, aiming at retrieving and accessing scientific publications’ repertoires. According to W. B. Rayward, historiographical studies on “document and information” refer to the development of treatment and dissemination methodologies promoted by Paul Otlet. During the same period bibliographies in the field of the History of Science were also conceived and organized by George Sarton. Considered one of the main articulators for the institutionalization of the History of Science, in 1913 he publishes the Bibliographie Analytique des Publications Relatives à l’Histoire de la Science and in this same year begins an important information and documental exchange with the Répertoire Bibliographique Universel (RBU) created by Otlet, with the purpose of introducing the History of Science among its themes. Letters exchanged between Sarton and Otlet can be found at the Mundaneum – Centre D’archives de la Communauté française and in the Widener Library at Harvard University during studies and research in the Post-Graduate Program at the Simão Mathias History of Science Studies Center (São Paulo, Brazil), we were able to perceive that Sarton took part in the 1913 Conference Bibliographique Internationale. This participation is due to the fact that Otlet considered History of Science a fundamental element of interaction with the other sciences. As from this moment a continuous exchange starts between the institutions. It is believed that the result of the research identified the proximity between History of Science and Information Science, evidenced by the analysis of documents located and obtained from Sarton and Otlet, and supplemented by information sources that have led to inferences showing that the two areas have interaction links in different dimensions. Such initial results should be considered a necessary tool for the performed systematization, leading to the configuration on the characteristics of the universe of studies and research in the History of Science, and it can be said that it will be able to contribute to and provide subsidies for a continuation in this direction.