Information Hunters
When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7869698 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Greg Barnhisel (Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 108 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 634-635 |
| Publication date | 2021-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaab310 |
| OpenAlex | W4226173366 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
Information warfare” predates Facebook, even if it was called “psychological warfare” back in analog days. And in the pre–World Wide Web age, when information was scarcer and harder to obtain, its collection, not its dissemination, was key to victory. In Information Hunters Kathy Peiss documents how information gathering was central to the U.S. victory in Europe—and how “collecting” also came to mean, after the conflict ended, keeping information away from certain populations. Presiding over wartime information hunting were Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish and William J. Donovan, founder of the Office of Strategic Services (Oss). Six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Donovan proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt a new intelligence agency that would “collect military, technological, economic, political, and psychological information, in order to understand and mobilize against threats to the United States” (p. 19). Donovan had been influenced by MacLeish, who believed that “librarians
Agency (philosophy · Business · Information Warfare · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Victory · World War II · History · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy · Law
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |