Lietuvos disertacijų kaip reikšmingo mokslo istorijos paveldo registravimas ir sklaida

Abstract

Straipsnyje pristatomas Lietuvos atminties bei kitose institucijose sovietmečiu ir šiais laikais vykdyto Lietuvos disertacijų kaip dokumentinio mokslo paveldo registravimo ir sklaidos rezultatų tyrimas. Straipsnio pradžioje, remiantis Lietuvoje ir pasaulyje atliktų bibliometrinių tyrimų rezultatų analize, atskleidžiamas disertacijų vaidmuo mokslo istorijos tyrimams. Toliau nagrinėjami svarbiausi Lietuvos institucijų atlikti darbai, registruojant, išsaugant ir skleidžiant informaciją apie Lietuvos mokslininkų disertacijas. Nagrinėjant informacijos apie disertacijas išteklių – bibliografijos priemonių, informacinių leidinių bei duomenų bazių – tematiką, chronologinę aprėptį, pateikiamų duomenų išsamumą, siekiama atskleisti šių išteklių visumos įvairovę ir institucijų indėlį registruojant bei skleidžiant informaciją apie disertacijas. Tyrimo metu surinkti duomenys apie disertacijas registruojančius spausdintinius išteklius pateikiami statistinėse lentelėse. Esminiai žodžiai: Lietuvos disertacijos; disertacijų santraukos; mokslo istorija; atminties institucijos; bibliografijos rodyklės; duomenų bazės; Lietuvos mokslų akademijos Vrublevskių biblioteka.

The article describes the activities of actualization and dissemination of Lithuanian dissertations as documentary scholarly heritage, carried out in Lithuanian memory and other institutions during the Soviet period and today. It reviews the most important works in registering, preserving and disseminating information on Lithuanian scholarly dissertations carried out by these institutions. The main focus is on one of the key means of disseminating information – bibliographical indexes and their preparation. Dissertations and their abstracts are important documents of scholarly heritage with enduring historical and scientific value. Bibliographic data on dissertations provide valuable information for research into the history of science and can be useful for studying the activities of a particular scholar or scholarly institution, the state of research in individual fields and in the country as a whole. In order to preserve and update this valuable scholarly heritage, the dissertations of Lithuanian scholars are collected and registered in libraries and research and education institutions. The most complete collection of contemporary dissertations is held in the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. The most important and comprehensive means of recording data on dissertations are bibliographic indexes. Information on dissertations is also recorded in bibliographical lists, biographical compendia, handbooks and surveys. Since 1958, the year when the first dissertation-recording publication came out, a total of five universal bibliographies (covering all fields of science), eight subject bibliographies (for individual fields of science), five bibliographic lists and seven other types of reference publications have been produced. Thanks to the efforts of the major Lithuanian libraries (the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, and the Vilnius University Library), bibliographies and card catalogues have been used to register dissertations in all fields of science between 1940 and 1990. Dissertations in individual fields of science were registered not only by the libraries (the Wroblewski Library and the Lithuanian Library of Medicine), but also by higher education institutions, research institutes, scientific societies and unions. They have produced retrospective bibliographies of dissertations in almost all scholarly fields (except technology). Most of them list theses defended by post-war Lithuanian scholars. An exception is the bibliography of medical sciences, which covers dissertations from 1793 to 1977. Dissertation databases, which began to be created in Lithuania in the late 20th century, took over the role of bibliographic indexes, expanding the possibilities of data retrieval and dissemination in Lithuania and worldwide. Three electronic resources (Lithuanian Science Potential, Database of Defended Dissertations and eLABa ETD) provide both retrospective and current bibliographic information on dissertations, while eLABa ETD also contains the texts of dissertations and their summaries. The totality of bibliographic tools and databases recording Lithuanian dissertations not only contributes to the dissemination of the country’s scholarly results, but also serves as a tool for qualitative and quantitative research into the history of science. Keywords: Lithuanian dissertations; theses; history of science; memory institutions; bibliographic indexes; databases; The Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences.