Published Resources Details

Conference Paper

Author
Warnow-Blewett, Joan
Title
Documenting Postwar Science: the Challenge of Change
In
Recovering Science: Strategies and Models for the Past, Present and Future: Proceedings of a Conference Held at the University of Melbourne, October 1992
Editors
Tim Sherratt, Lisa Jooste and Rosanne Clayton
Imprint
Australian Science Archives Project, Canberra, 1995, pp. 39-50
Url
https://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/confs/recovering/blewett.htm
Subject
History of Australian Science - General
Format
Print
Description

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Abstract

In this paper, I will describe two major organisational structures that emerged in the postwar period. The first is the government contract laboratory; that is, a lab funded by the Federal Government, but administered by a private corporation or academic institution. My focus will be the national laboratories of the Department of Energy. There are about eight of these national labs. The first - the Brookhaven National Laboratory - was set up in 1946. It sits on 6,000 acres of land and has some 3,000 employees, about one-fourth of whom are scientific researchers. The second structure is the multi-institutional collaboration; here we have teams from several - and often many - institutions joining forces to carry out an experiment or research project.

Organisational and technological change present enormous challenges to archivists and others who must learn how to document the new phenomena. To meet the challenge, JCAST (the American Joint Committee on Archives of Science and Technology), in its 1983 report, recommended documentation research, that is, research to resolve archival problems. I will illustrate its first use in a project aimed at learning how to document the postwar government contract laboratories. The main subject of my paper will be the dramatic rise of the multi-institutional collaboration and the archival implications of changes in organisational structures, communications patterns, and records of research.

Source
Carlson 1996

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  • Recovering Science: Strategies and Models for the Past, Present and Future: Proceedings of a Conference Held at the University of Melbourne, October 1992 edited by Sherratt, Tim; Jooste, Lisa; Clayton, Rosanne (Canberra: Australian Science Archives Project, 1995), 124 pp, https://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/confs/recovering/contents.htm. Details

EOAS ID: bib/HASB04484.htm

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