Foundations of Government Information and Bibliographic Control in the United States: 1789-1900

A history of classification and bibliographic control of government information is, by necessity, a tangled tale that involves the complex evolution of governments, the regularization of official publishing, along with the growth of professional librarianship. For the purposes of this article, the main argument will draw its narrative largely from the historic evolution of bibliographic control and U.S. government information during the nineteenth century. The standards and practices developed in the United States during this period remain a common framework for the discussion of any government in the world. It is further argued that these bibliographic arrangements remained in play until the 1980s when the advent of distributed computer networks began to undermine the traditions of what had largely been a print culture. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: © 2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]