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The article presents the author's views on the historical development of information infrastructures and the dissemination of knowledge. The author has published a number of historical studies examining utopian schemes for managing knowledge, the evolution of institutionalized or organizational aspects of information infrastructure, and the emergence of what he thinks of as an interdiscipline. The "Universe of Information: The Work of Paul Otlet for Documentation and International Organization" was an initial study of a hitherto neglected figure. A Russian translation of this book was published in 1977 and a Spanish edition in 1996. With the advent of the Internet and the Web, it has become clear how pioneering and important historically the work of Paul Otlet and his colleagues was. It seems yet even more relevant today with the recently announced agreement between Google and a number of research libraries to digitize and make their collections available through the Web. In Information Processing and Management, "Some Schemes for Restructuring and Mobilizing Information in Documents: A Historical Perspective," the author examines the utopian information management ideas of John Dury and Samuel Hartlib.

The transition from mechanical printing to electronic information dissemination amounts to a digital renaissance, enabling primary source documents to be reborn as electronic resources. For history scholars, this presents opportunities and challenges for preserving centuries-old original texts in a digital environment, supporting downloading and digital access and presenting original research. The Post-Reformation Digital Library (PRDL) serves as a case study, capturing a select set of resources on theology and philosophy of the 15th to 18th centuries from a variety of physical locations and digital libraries. Through digitization, digital access and systematic cataloging, the PRDL -- along with the database, social networking and dedicated website it has prompted -- are helping to overcome barriers to access. Though a modest initiative, the progress of the PRDL demonstrates possibilities for rediscovering historical materials and making them available for modern scholarly studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the techniques used in locating a specific type of image or file in the U.S. Because of the existence of different types of images which varies in color, type and description, it is difficult for user to locate a specific image that he wants. Previously, the Library of Congress uses Thesaurus for Graphic Materials I and Thesaurus for Graphic Materials II in cataloguing and retrieving images. With the onset of new technology, collaborative tagging is used in assigning keywords to textual documents and image resources. Such a tool is used by sharing sites such as Flick because it allows massive image storage and web diffusion wherein users upload their own images and index them using their own tags.