Historical Information on Scholarly Societies Sometimes determining even the founding date of a society can be a daunting task. Establishing when name changes occurred is often more difficult, since existing documentation can be hard to find. Centenary, bicentenary, etc. These can generally be identified using rich online library catalogues or rich printed library catalogues . The Institutions section of this bibliography includes references to journal articles and monographs on the history of scholarly societies.
Most societies covered are scientific or technical.
The cumulations go back to 1915. In 1999 a pilot project was begun within the Project to address the difficulty in determining historical data on scholarly societies. It uses the sources above to help determine as well as possible the history of name changes for the societies, as well as other interesting historical details. It can sometimes be rather difficult to establish the correct title, publishing years and volume numbers for older journals of scholarly societies. The problem is exacerbated by frequent changes in the society's name caused by political upheavals, for example those in France from 1792 to 1870.