American Documentation Institute

1717 and 1719 S Street, N.W. - former headquarters of the American Documentation Institute^[1]

The American Documentation Institute (ADI) was founded by Watson Davis^[2] (1896-1967) in 1935 as Documentation Institute which changed its name to the American Documentation Institute in 1937. In 1968 it changed its name to American Society for Information Science, which again in 2000 changed its name to the present: American Society for Information Science and Technology

Watson Davis was one of the first Americans to take an interest in how the terms “document” and “documentation” were being used in Europe.

ADI early on worked toward the development of microfilm readers and cameras. Their first microfilm laboratories were located in the U.S.Department of Agriculture Library in Washington, DC and the Institute distributed materials through the newly created Bibliofilm Service. In 1954, the Photoduplication Service at the Library of Congress took over the operation and in 2009 the Library of Congress Technical Reports and Standards Unit became the source point for distributing ADI materials.^[3] In many respects, the ADI goal for the easy dissemination of information was a precursor to housing data sets and related content in digital repositories accessible via the Web.^[4]

ADI decided in 1950 to create a journal modeled after the defunct Journal of Documentary Reproduction, which had been published by the American Library Association from 1938^[5] to 1942.^[6] ADI published the journal American Documentation.^[7] from 1950 until 1968, when ADI changed its name as an organization and renamed American Documentation as the Journal of the American Society for Information Science. In 2000, the society changed names again, and the journal followed suit, becoming the current Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. In 1966, ADI began publication of the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. Its successor organizations continued publishing the annual review under that title until 2011.^[8]

See also

• Documentation science
• Library Science
• Information Science
• American Society for Information Science and Technology

Further reading

• From documentation to information science: The beginnings and early development of the American Documentation Institute by Irene Frakas Conn, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT (1990). xiii+ 229 pp., ISBN 0-313-25505-9.

References

1. "American Documentation Institute Reports". Retrieved 11 December 2012.
2. Schultz, Claire K. & Garwig, Paul L. (1969). History of the American Documentation Institute-A Sketch. American Documentation, 20(2), 152-160.
3. "American Documentation Institute Reports". Library of Congress, "Technical Reports and Standards Unit".
4. "American Documentation Institute Reports". Retrieved 11 December 2012.
5. "Journal of Documentary Reproduction". Retrieved 10 December 2012.
6. "THE LANDSCAPE OF INFORMATION SCIENCE: THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AT 62". Retrieved 10 December 2012.
7. Tate, V. (1950). Introducing American Documentation, a quarterly review of ideas, techniques, problems, and achievements in documentation. American Documentation, 1(1), 3-6.
8. "ARIST to Cease Publication". Retrieved 10 December 2011.

Farkas-Conn, Irene S. (1990). From Documentation to Information Science. The Beginnings and Early Development of the American Documentation Institute - American Society for information Science. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.