The Monty Hyams Archive. A new resource for the information history of the late twentieth century
| Published date | 13 March 2017 |
| Date | 13 March 2017 |
| Pages | 357-367 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-10-2016-0127 |
| Author | Caitlin Moore,Lyn Robinson |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
The Monty Hyams Archive
A new resource for the information history
of the late twentieth century
Caitlin Moore and Lyn Robinson
City, University of London, London, UK
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to report a new resource for the study of the history of the
development of information science and information services in the late twentieth century. The Monty Hyams
archives include documents relating to the career of Montagu Hyams (1918-2013), the Founder of Derwent
Publications, and an innovator in patents information, chemical and pharmaceutical information, and online
information access. The Archive is housed in the Department of Library and Information Science at City,
University of London.
Design/methodology/approach –The origins and development of the Monty Hyams Archive are
described, and its value examined by an initial analysis of the light it sheds on the development of Derwent’s
World Patents Index.
Findings –The newly established Hyams Archive allows analysis of previously private and unseen
documents, which reveal the fascinating and complex personalities, issues and negotiations which led to the
establishment of some of the most significant information sources and access methods of the pre-internet
information environment.
Originality/value –The Monty Hyams Archive is a new and unique resource for the study of the
development of the scientific information environment in the last decades of the twentieth century.
Keywords Archives, History, Intellectual property, Derwent Publications, Montagu Hyams,
Patent information
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
This paper gives an introduction to the Monty Hyams Archive, a newly available resource
for the history of the information industry in the late twentieth century.
The archive includes the personal papers, and ancillary material of the late Montagu
(Monty) Hyams (1918-2013), a leading British information scientist of the time, and an
innovator in patents information and in online searching. The Archive was created by the
Hyams estate, particularly his sons Peter and Stephen Hyams, and presented to the
Department of Library and Information Science at City, University of London. An initial
analysis and organisation of the archive was carried out as a masters dissertation project by
one of us (CM). This paper gives an outline of the contents of the archive, and an example of
the value of material therein; a more detailed account is given by Moore (2015). Background
information on Monty Hyams is given in Poynder (2000) and Hyams (2013), and in a website
maintained by the Hyams estate at www.montyhyams.info.
Monty Hyams and Derwent Publications
In 1947, Monty Hyams was hired by the Pyrene Company as a Research Chemist and would
later take on the role of Patents Manager. Working for the company, he made frequent trips
to London to visit the British Patent Office where he would create abstracts for patents
pertinent to chemical information. This resulted in the earliest product developed by Monty
Hyams, the weekly bulletin “British Chemical Patents Report”which began publication in
1948. Derwent Publications Ltd (originally known as Derwent Information Service) began as Journal of Documentation
Vol. 73 No. 2, 2017
pp. 357-367
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-10-2016-0127
Received 20 October 2016
Revised 3 December 2016
Accepted 4 December 2016
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
The authors thank Peter Hyams, Stephen Hyams, and Charles Oppenheim for their generous
assistance and advice.
357
The Monty
Hyams
Archive
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