When he was a boy, Eugene Garfield lived across the street from a branch of the New York Public Library. There, he spent hours wandering through the stacks, scanning the titles of all the books on the shelves. "I had to get special permission, because they wouldn't let a kid in the adult section," recalls Garfield, who turned 80 in September. That might seem "staggeringly obsessive," in the words of one colleague, but it might explain Garfield's interest in how to find and organize information – a fascination that has shaped his professional career.