-JLJLY-CHAPTER 8CONCLUSIONSThis report has dealt with an important but a relatively uninterestingstage of the project, for it has really involved nothing m o r e than theconstruction of a piece of test equipment which had to be available before
any investigations could be made.

While any firm conclusions will haveto await the result of using the equipment in the test p r o g r a m m e , t h e r e
a r e certain comments which can be made regarding this stage of the work,
partly in pointing out some obvious m i s t a k e s .

P r i m a r i l y we were at

fault in our calculations of t i m e and were only able to complete thep r o g r a m m e as planned because we had allowed a generous amount of
spare time.

The original intention of this allowance was partly so thatthe indexing staff would be able to help with the c l e r i c a l routines, butmainly so that they would have reasonable breaks from indexing.

The

fact that they were unable to do any other work was relatively unimportant,since this could be done by p a r t - t i m e staff.

It was m o r e s e r i o u s thatthroughout the second y e a r they could have only short breaks fromindexing, and I feared that s t a l e n e s s brought on by mental indigestion
would affect the standard of indexing.

Fortunately this does not appear

to have happened.
We had two s e p a r a t e delays.

F i r s t , following the announcement of

the award of the grant, t h e r e was a gap of seven months before we started
the indexing.

Secondly we had the long period when indexing proceededv e r y spasmodically due to difficulties in setting up the s y s t e m s .

Ourdifficulties were partly due to the fact that we were forming what virtually
amounted to a new organisation.
unit already in being

Had t h e r e been a documentation r e s e a r c hin England, it might have been possible to have118 followed the suggestion made by the National Science Foundation that,prior to the award of the main grant, we should have carried out asmall pilot investigation.

The difficulty for us lay in finding suitable

qualified staff who would be willing to join an investigation whose future
was not definitely certain. Now that Aslib are setting up a research
unit, it is to be hoped that it will be possible for permanent staff to do
preliminary work which might thereafter be continued by staff who aretaken on for the duration of the main project.
One possible weakness of the programme was the lack of feedback to
the indexers.

In normal circumstances, an indexer in an organisation

will be continuously aware of the type of enquiry which is being put tothe indexes, and quite often it would be the case that the indexer ishimself carrying out searches.

As a result, he will be influenced in

his indexing and might be expected to index more effectively for theneeds of the particular organisation.

Mr. Sharp had some years

experience of working in an aircraft firm, and therefore knew thetypes of question which we might expect to receive.

Mr. Hadlow, on

the other hand, had no previous practical experience which could help
him with the indexing and was not able to obtain any during this stageof the project.
It can be counted as a retreat from our original plans that we did
not have the services as an indexer of a person with technical qualifications
I do not think that this can be considered as seriously affecting the basic
purpose of the project, namely the comparative efficiency of the systems,
and there are other methods which we can use to a s s e s s whether atechnical indexer would have been more or l e s s efficient than the librarians
who did the work.

- 119 Future stages
The National Science Foundation have awarded a further grant forthe completion of the project, and the basic test programme is now underway. This is expected to be completed by December 1960, and will befollowed by a detailed analysis of the results which may, in turn, show
the need for further testing.
It will be possible to analyse our results so as to ascertain in detailthe reasons for the success or failure in locating information.
this general framework lie the decisions by the indexer

Withinof the significant

m a t t e r s in the text; the assistance which is given by the different systems
to enable him to decide on satisfactory codings for the selected information;
the ease or difficulty of translating the language of a question enquiry into
the language of the index; the comparative assistance which the various
systems give the s e a r c h e r in finding specific or further relevant information-.
We shall be able to isolate many of the variables which a r e inherent
in the problem and find the effect of altering our original actions.
Eventually it should be possible to a r r i v e at a position where we canstate with reasonable certainty exactly which requirements an informationretrieval system must meet and propose methods for the design of sucha system. Writing of the advances that have taken place in aerdnautics
during the past 50 y e a r s , Mr. M . J . Lighthill, F . R. S. , Director of theRoyal Aircraft Establishment, says "Countless ingenious experiments onmodels lay at the back of every advance, and brilliant theories have been
evolved to make sense of the experiments".

We hope that the dataobtained from this experiment will provide many others working in thefield with information which will enable them to advance t h e i r theories
in the basic design of retrieval s y s t e m s .

. de Kock. A . C . ,van der Vooren, A.I.

. Cleverdon, C.W.,
Thox-ne, R. G.

The N.L. L. Card Catalogue of
Aerodynamic ~ e a s u r e m e n t s .
N. L. L. Report F125 1953.
A Brief Experiment with the Uniterm
System of Co-ordinate indexing for
the Cataloguing of Structural Data.
R. A.E. Library Memo 7. 1954.

3.

Vessey, H . F .

Tests of N.L. L. Card Catalogue of
Aerodynamic Measurements.
R.A.E. Cibrary Memo 1954.

4.

Cleverdon, C.W.

Some Aspect of Information Retrieval.
Aslib Proceedings, Vo1.7, 1955 pp 153-6.
Editorial ''The Truth, the Whole Truth.
American Documentation, Vol.6, 1955
PP58.

..

,6.

8.

Metcalfe, I.J.

Information Indexing and Subject
catalo-.
New York. Scarecrow P r e s s , 1957.

Classification ResearchGroup

Bulletin No. 5,Jnl. of Documentation. Vo1.15, 1959,
pp 39 57.

Mathieu, J. ,Barlen, S.

Guiding Principles for Time and Cost
in Documentation work.
Forschber. Wirts-U. Verkehrom.
N-Rh-Westf. (638)1@58.{M.of S. TILJT4966)-.

Library Retrieval: The R. R.E. Pilot
Retriwal Scheme.
R . B . E . Jnl. October 1958, pp 59 68.

-- 121
References (Continued)
10.

Mooers.C.N.

Zatocoding and Developments inInformation Retrieval.
Aslib Proceedings, Vol.8, 1956
pp 3 - 22.

11.

Wildhack.W.A. ,Stern, J . ,Smith, J .

Documentation in Instrumentation.
American Documentation, Vol.5,
1954, pp 223 - 237.

12.

Wadington,J.P.

Unit Concept Co-ordinate Indexing.
American Documentation, Vol.9,
1958, pp 107 - 113.

13.

Farradane, J . E . L.

A Scientific Theory of Classification
and Indexing.
Jnl. of Documentation, Vol.6, 1950
pp 83 - 99. Vol.8, 1952, pp 73 - 92

14.

Coates, E . J .

The Use of the B.N. B. in Dictionary
Cataloguing.
Library Ass. Record, Vol.59, 1957,
pp 197 - 202.

15.

Kaiser, J .

Systematic Indexing.
London, 1911.

16.

Prevost.M.L.

An Approach to the Theory and Methodin General Subject Headings.
Library Quarterly, Vol.12, 1942,
pp 140 - 151.

17.

Swanson,D.R.

Word Correlation and Automatic Indexing
Phase I Final Report. An Experiment inAutomatic Text Searching.
Ramo Wooldridge, 1960.

18.

Sanford,J.A.
Theriault.F.R.

Problems in the Application of Uniterm
Co-ordinate Indexing.
College and Research Libraries, Vol. 17,
1956, pp 19 - 23.