Information science
Christopher Columbus’ son’s universal library is newly rediscovered in this lost tome
Hernando Colón was the illegitimate son of famed explorer Christopher Columbus. His love of books inspired him to attempt an ambitious dream: store all of the world’s books in one place. He summarized much of the information in his “Libro de los Epítomes,” which has recently been rediscovered.
100,000 Volunteer Proofreaders and a Whole Lot of Books
Perhaps you, like millions of other people out there, have perused the books in the world’s oldest electronic library, Project Guttenberg. Founded in 1971, Project Guttenberg has put tens of thousands of books in the public domain on-line, on CDs, and on DVDs. But they haven’t done it alone. In 2000, an organization called Distributed […]
The Half-Life of Facts
Scientometrics is the science of measuring science. It’s the invention of mathematician Derek de Solla Price. Sixty-five years ago, he was asked to store a complete set of “The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society” in his house. The stacks for each year’s volumes, he noticed, got bigger and bigger. On inspection, he noticed that […]
