Early reactions to information growth

The expansion in the number of journals being published really took off in the nineteenth century. Between the beginning and end of that century, the problems of dealing with the spread of literature appearing consequently gr ew rapidly. The reactions of scientists to this included a move towards inc reasing specialisation in their research, and a higher level of organisatio n of their communication activities. Li particular, ways of assisting infor mation retrieval were developed then which became extremely important in th e twentieth century. Two of these developments are examined here - the prov ision of abstracts for scientists and of popular articles for non-scientist s. Parallels can be found between these two activities, as well as differen ces due to the different target audiences. It is noted that both appeared i n print environment: an electronic environment may affect their futures dif ferently.