Positivist libraries, catalogs, and other lists: How the booksellers and algorithmics think?

Abstract:

This article analyzes a set of 22 booksellers’ catalogs, published in the last decades of the 19th century, whose subject was the positivism. Sometimes called positivist libraries, these lists allow us to describe how booksellers, in the period, deal with the positivism and mobilized it in favor of their sales. Using a digital approach, notably the visual representation in the form of graphs, we discussed how the 150 authors cited in the catalogs were ranked by these agents of the book world, allowing us to speak in an order of booksellers. We also analyzed the methodological impasses involved in the application of graphs to understand a set of listings, contributing to the debate on the use of digital technologies in historiographical practice.

Keywords:
Positivist libraires; Digital history; Networks