Current Bibliography in the History of Technology (1998)

The following compilation is the thirty-sixth annual bibliography of current publications in the history of technology. Previous bibliographies in this series have appeared in Technology and Culture since 1964. The reader is also referred to the fifth publication of the SHOT Monograph Series, Eugene S. Ferguson's Bibliography of the History of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: SHOT and MIT Press, 1968).

The bibliography has been available to scholars in electronic form since March 1992 on the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) as part of the HST (History of Science and Technology) file. It provides on-line access to Current Bibliography in the History of Technology for the years 1987 through 1998, and it is possible to query it from your personal computer using a variety of indexes, assuming that you have a modem or access to the Internet. Members of the Society for the History of Technology now have free access to this database; for instructions, please consult the SHOT homepage hosted by the Johns Hopkins University Press on the World Wide Web <http://www. press.jhu.edu/associations/shot/hstlink.htm>. For more information on personal or institutional RLIN accounts, please contact the RLIN Information Center at 800-537-7546 (U.S. and Canada) or consult the homepage of the Research Libraries Group <http://www.rlg.org>. The Current Bibliography of the History of Science, the Bibliografia Italiana di Storia della Scienza and, most recently added, the Wellcome Bibliography of the History of Medicine are also represented in the HST file. Plans call for more bibliographic files in the history of science, technology, and medicine, including national bibliographies, to be added to the file in time. Users of the HST file or this printed bibliography can obtain from me a copy of the working thesaurus for the Current Bibliography in the History of Technology, which should prove useful in working with this database in either format.

I would like to thank the contributors to the bibliography: Stephen Cutcliffe, Guillaume de Syon, Michael Friedewald, Mary Habstritt, Katalin Harkányi, Patrick Harshbarger, and Ian Winship. Readers willing to scan a selected set of journals or keep track of publications in one of the subfields of the history of technology should contact me, as additional contributors are welcome and needed. I hope that a few members of the Society for the History of Technology will step forward to increase the number of contributors. Improved coverage of Eastern European, Asian, and Latin American publications remains a desideratum, and help in these areas from correspondents would be welcome. Institutions or individuals aware of a journal or publication series that has been neglected in recent years are encouraged to help me track down these elusive publications and ensure their coverage in future bibliographies. I also thank those who have sent me individual publications, offprints, journal issues, or citations over the past year. This bibliography only can provide a comprehensive picture of published research in the history of technology if those who publish will take a bit of time to submit offprints or full citations to me at the History of Science and Technology Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California 94305-6004. If you are the editor or publisher of books in the history of technology or a journal that is not being covered in the bibliography, please write to me to make sure that the bibliography includes your publication(s). I welcome bibliographic information sent via electronic mail (lowood@stanford.edu) or fax (650-725-1068).

I would like to thank a few people who have contributed behind the scenes. Yefim Joseph Rozengauz assisted with bibliographic verification and data entry, as well as journal scanning; his work was supported by the Ellen Poyet Endowment, which funds an assistantship in the history of science and technology in the Stanford University Libraries. I am also grateful to Joe Schultz of Technology and Culture for his editorial work, guidance, and patience, and to Heidi Beck for copyediting the bibliography. Finally...