Samuel C. Bradford

Samuel Clement Bradford (1878-1948) was a British mathematician, librarian and documentalist at the Science Museum in London. He developed Bradford's law" (or the "law of scattering") regarding differences in demand for scientific journals. This work influences bibliometrics and citation analysis of scientific publications. Bradford founded the British Society for International Bibliography (BSIB) (est. 1927) and he was elected president of International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID) in 1945. Bradford was a strong proponent of the UDC and of establishing abstracts of the scientific literature.

Bradford's works

• Bradford, S. C. (1934). Sources of information on specific subjects. Engineering, 26, p. 85-86.
• Bradford, S. C. (1946). Romance of Roses. London: F. Muller.
• Bradford, S. C. (1948). Documentation. London: Crosby Lockwood.
• Bradford, S. C. (1953). Documentation. 2nd ed. With an introd. by Jesse H. Shera and Margaret E. Egan. London: Crosby Lockwood.

Literature

• Gosset, M. & Urquhart, D. J. (1977). S. C. Bradford, Keeper of the Science Museum Library 1925-1937. Journal of Documentation, 33, 173-179.

See also

• Bradford's law