Science and Technology Studies (STS) Collection

A collection of over 85,000 books and periodicals, the STS Collection is a world-class collection focussing on the history and social aspects of science, technology and medicine. It is the product of over a hundred years of acquiring historical as well as contemporary texts.

History

The academic and popular history and biography of all aspects of science and technology are covered comprehensively, including: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, all branches of engineering, industrial archaeology, company history, transportation (road, rail, sea, air and space), metallurgy, mining, textile industries, horology, scientific and medical instruments, computers and printing.

There is also selective coverage of the history and biography of medicine, popular science and the social aspects and public understanding of science and technology. Encyclopaedias and specialised and general bibliographies supplement the historical works. The STS collection is strongest in English and major European languages, although other languages are also represented. Although the collection focuses on the history of British, European and American science and technology, it also covers world-wide progress and innovation.

Biography

Biographies form an important part of the collection with over 5000 volumes including autobiographies, biographies, published diaries and collected correspondence of individuals involved in all aspects of science, technology, engineering and medicine. In addition there is a large collection of collected biographies including the Dictionary of Scientific Biography and Who’s who and national biographical dictionaries.

The collection also includes reprints, facsimile reprints, and translations of works as well as large runs of collected or selected works of individual authors. These often include commentaries by later authors and sometimes bibliographies of their works.

The collections form the core of the Science Museum Library London and is located on level 3 of the Imperial College Central Library. It is open-access, can be browsed and is arranged using UDC (Universal Decimal Classification). The collection is completely catalogued and can be searched using the computer catalogue.

Histories published in the nineteenth century are available by request from staff at the STS Desk. Histories published before 1800 are stored at the Wroughton library as part of the Rare Books Collection.