Countless volumes and nearly 9,000 Landmarks titles have been released to date.

The journals in Landmarks are particularly noteworthy. Landmarks contains 350 titles on 780 reels of 17th, 18th and 19th century periodicals and academy publications. Some of these journals are not held by the Collections in printed format.

To find out if a work you are looking for is available in Landmarks, try the following:

• Search the OU Libraries catalog. However, some Landmarks items may not turn up when searching the Libraries’ online catalog, nor in the Collections’ printed card catalog.
• Consult our lists of Landmarks books and journals. The books list is current to July 2009; the journals list is complete for Landmarks II up through March, 1984.
• One of the best ways to identify Landmarks titles is to search WorldCat for microforms containing “Landmarks of Science.” If a Landmarks title is in WorldCat, it is usually here. Often, WorldCat is the most efficient way to identify a Landmarks title.

When you know what you want, ask staff in the Microform center within Government Documents (Bizzell Library, 4th floor) to retrieve Landmarks titles for you. Landmarks microforms, like other history of science microforms, were integrated into the Libraries’ microform collection in August 2013.

Note: Landmarks is divided into different parts, which make little difference to the user, but it is helpful to be aware of the three parts when retrieving them. The three parts are:

• Landmarks I, which contains monographs and some journals (produced 1967-1975).
• Landmarks II – Monographs (produced 1976-present), and
• Landmarks II – Journals (produced 1976-present).

BAROILLET. Rapport du Comité des Fortifications, sur une méthode d’écrire en chiffres et sur l’instrument approprié à cet objet, proposés par le citen Baroillet. [France, c. 1790]

Baroillet presented the Ministry of War with an instrument containing moving parts which he called a Kinographe, accompanied by an explanatory Mémoire. Corrected in the scribe’s hand in many places, this manuscript may be the first draft of the Mémoire. After a short exposition of various methods of encryption, Baroillet proposed a method of date-dependent encryption using the Kinographe for messages sent via semaphore towers. The Committee on Fortifications approved of Baroillet’s Kinographe, but offered no precise description of the Kinographe device which, naturally, had to be kept secret.

Cryptographic material from the French Revolution is very rare, although cryptology played an important role in the diplomatic and military history of the period.

This brief guide lists some of the microform series available, including Landmarks of Science and the Manuscripta collection. However, they are no longer available in the History of Science Collections on the 5th floor.

As of August 2013, history of science microforms are now integrated with the Libraries’ microform collection and held in remote storage. Upon request via Sooner Express, microforms will be delivered to the microform reading station in Government Documents, 4th floor, Bizzell Library. This arrangement provides improved hours of access and ensures more up-to-date and functioning readers.

The header for the blog is taken from a 1535 work by Albrecht Dürer held in the Collections. The transformation of a three-dimensional object onto a two-dimensional canvas by means of perspective drawing, depicted by Dürer, suggests our aim to transform the three-dimensional space of the History of Science Collections onto the ethereal “canvas” of this blog.

View additional Dürer images at the Collections’ image galleries.