- 20 CHAPTER 3
GENERAL ORGANISATION OF PROGRAMME
There were three main variables to be investigated, namely thesystem, the indexer, and the indexing time. With four systems, threeindexers and five indexing t i m e s , the number of permutations is sixty.
The documents to be indexed were divided into groups of one hundred(from here on referred to as a "document group"), and therefore
6,000 documents were indexed before the same indexing conditions arerepeated.
The procedure was that the first indexer indexed documents 1 - 100by system A, allowing himself an average time of 16 minutes for eachdocument.

Immediately after indexing a document by system A, he

allocated the appropriate headings or classification numbers for systems
B, C, and D, but this was done without strict time control.

Documents

101 - 200 were indexed by system B with the 16 minute allowance foreach document

followed by the postings for systems A, C, and D.

Items 201 - 300 and 301 - 400 were similarly indexed by systems C and D.
This procedure was repeated for documents 401 - 500, 501 - 600,
601 - 700, and 701 - 800, except that for these document groups theaverage indexing time was limited to 12 minutes.

For documents 801 - 1200,

the time was limited to 8 minutes; for 1201 - 1600 it was 4 minutes, andfinally for documents 1601 - 2000 the indexing time was limited to 2
n\inutes per document.

Meanwhile the second indexer carried out asimilar procedure with documents 2001 - 4000, and the third indexer
was doing the same with documents 4001 - 6000. The indexing of
documents 6001 - 12,000 repeated the conditions found in the indexing

- 21 of 1 - 6000, and the whole stage was repeated for the third time indocuments 12,001 - 18,000.
The preparation of these document groups was done in advance;in the e a r l i e r stages of the work the procedure was for the documents
to be collected together and a list prepared.

As described earlier,within each group of 100 documents there were the further sub-groupsof having half the documents dealing with high speed aerodynamics
while the remainder ranged over the whole subject field.

There wasthe division between periodical articles and r e s e a r c h r e p o r t s , andalso between United States publications and those from other countries.
To simplify the somewhat complex procedure that this involved, in thelater stages of the work we first typed cards giving details of a large
number of documents and were able, more effectively, to make ourselection of document groups by sorting these c a r d s .
Before being passed to the indexer, each document had a m a s t e r
indexing card inserted.

This card, as shown in Fig. 1, contained the

project document number, and information concerning the indexer,
the main indexing system and the time allowance.
On receiving the group of 100 documents, the indexer had the
responsibility of indexing them to the best of his or her ability within
the conditions imposed.

Presuming that the indexer had received agroup of 100 documents to be indexed by the Universal DecimalClassification as the main system with an indexing time of 16 minutes,
this meant that the indexer would have to complete the indexing by
U . D . C . of this group of documents within a total time of 1600 minutes,
and he was given the flexibility to vary the time spent on any individual
item.

In addition he had to index by the other three systems, and this- 22 -

question of the subsidiary indexing presented some initial problems.
Basically it was not intended that there should be the same strict time
controls with the subsidiary indexing as was the case with the mainindexing, but it was desirable that the indexing should be approximately
the same standard by all systems within any single group.
The difficulty arose in trying to separate the time spent in assessing
the subject content of a document as against the time spent in deciding
on the most satisfactory notation or headings.

The percentage of timespent in these two actions would not remain constant throughout thevarying time allowances, and as the time allowance became shorter theratio of reading time to indexing time decreased sharply.

As a resultof tests made by the indexers it was decided that the following times
should be allowed for the subsidiary systems.
Main system

Subsidiary system

16 mins.

4 mins.

12

3

8

2

4

li

2

1

Later experience bore out the correctness of these figures, andit was felt at the end of the whole of the indexing work that the a s s e s s ment had been about right.
The amount of time required for assessing the subject content ofa report as against the time taken for assigning suitable headings
naturally varied from one report to another.

In general, the times

listed above made for consistent indexing and the subject matter of a

- 23 -

document could usually be assimilated quickly enough to leave adequate
time for assigning class numbers. In fact, with the majority of reports
the indexers found themselves assigning numbers very shortly after
first examining the document, and further reading merely served toconfirm the original classification, except where later in the reportmention was made of a subsidiary subject, ( e . g . a special method of
testing), which demanded separate indexing.
There were cases where all the time available was needed forreading the document, because of the abstruse nature of the subject,but in general this made little difference to the comparative times
spent on the subsidiary systems and nothing should be lost on thisaccount.
The greatest difficulty in this respect was caused by the report
whose subject matter was easily assimilated, but which required alarge number of class numbers or subject headings because of themany different subjects treated.

At the longer times even these could

usually be catered for adequately in the times permitted for subsidiarysystems.

In a few exceptional cases at the shorter t i m e s , the indexers

used some discretion about using rather longer times for subsidiarysystems.

It would obviously have been wrong to devote almost the fulltime of, say, 4 minutes for the main system to assigning classnumbers for a document which needed little actual reading, and tor e s t r i c t the subsidiary systems to the stated l£ minutes.

These cases

were r a r e , and it can hardly be doubted that the course taken in these
instances was the correct one.
A point which had to be watched carefully, particularly in the earlystages, whilst the indexes were building up quickly, was the time spent- 24 -

in making decisions about the choice of, say, a new U . D . C number,or a new alphabetical subject heading. Where such a decision was notjust the appropriateness of the heading to the document in question
but a question of general policy that required a discussion and a joint
decision by all the staff, the time was not included in the indexing
time, as this would have affected the quality of the indexing of that
document adversely.
The original proposal envisaged the completion of the work within
two years from the commencement date, at the same time permitting
the indexers a generous allowance of leave to compensate for the
arduous nature of the work.

This estimate was based on a working

week of 38 hours, but it rapidly became clear that this estimate wasa very poor one, for one of thegreatest difficulties in the early stage

was that experienced by the indexers in becoming accustomed to thevery stringent conditions which continuous indexing with time controlled
by a stop watch brought about.

The mental strain of working underthese conditions was severe, but perseverance eventually brought about
an attitude of mind which made the work bearable.

It was felt that two

years was as much as the average human being could reasonably be
expected to index under such controlled conditions, even though thenumber of hours actually logged as indexing time was a comparatively
low proportion of what would be regarded as normal working hours.
Taken as an average in the later stages of the work, it was theexperience of the indexers that five hours recorded indexing time
represented a good day's work

We endeavoured to find how this mightcompare with experience in work of a comparable nature, but could only
learn of one test that had been done privately in an industrial organisation.

- 25 -

This showed that in an engineering design office an average of 40% of
a l\ hour working day was spent in actual productive work.

F r o m this

it would appear that t h e i n d e x e r s did reasonably well to reach 66%,
particularly when it is remembered that some of their unrecorded time
would be taken up with discussions directly relevant to their work.
The practical implication of this recorded time as against time spentin the office is that our average time of 16 minutes would under normal
working conditions be 25 minutes, and the other times would be increased
proportionately.

The result is that the difference in output for thevarious timings would be 18, 25, 36, 72 and 144 items indexed for aworking day of l\ hours.
At first it seemed that the quality of the indexing was inconsistent,
but g r e a t e r standardisation through discussion, greater familiarity withthe various schemes, and a general working up to peak efficiency led toa more satisfactory situation, and by the time that the first 6,000 documents
had been dealt with, the indexers had established a tempo which wasmaintained to the end of the whole of the indexing.

We feel confident thatconsistency reached a standard that will be more than high enough toensure that the testing will be done on material of acceptable quality.
It was desirable to have one person on the staff with overall
responsibility for each system used in the indexing, and from the start
Mr. J . S h a r p was in charge of the U D.C. and Mr. J.Kadlow of thealphabetical subject catalogue.

The Director was concerned with theUniterm index until the appointment of Miss Warburton, who thenresumed responsibility for this system.
With the facet schedules, Mr. Opatowski spent a great deal of timein the early stages carrying out technical revisions. (This aspect is- 26 -

d i s c u s s e d l a t e r in Chapter 4 and m o r e particularly in Ref. 7).

After

his departure Mr. Sharp and Mr. Hadlow prepared an authoritative
l i s t of headings t o be used for the chain index, but when t h i s had been
completed, we "froze" the s c h e d u l e s and made no alteration of any
kind. As i s d i s c u s s e d l a t e r , we had a t e m p o r a r y device which enabled
us to introduce s u b j e c t s which w e r e not included in the originals c h e d u l e s , thi6 being done by giving to all subjects the notation of "Zz".
T h e s e w e r e comparatively few in n u m b e r , and a s a result t h e r e w a s noneed for any further control of t h i s s y s t e m .
With the U . D . C . , for which Mr. Sharp w a s r e s p o n s i b l e , if e i t h e rof the other two i n d e x e r s wished to generate a new number which had
not p r e v i o u s l y been u s e d , they would use the number and make out anappropriate indexing s l i pe.g.

Planetary g e a r s

621.833.6

T h e s e would be p a s s e d daily t o Mr. Sharp, who would be r e s p o n s i b l e
for checking that the use of t h i s number did not contravene any p r e v i o u s l y
a r r i v e d at policy d e c i s i o n s .

He would then edit the s l i p to conform to

the accepted layout, and make any additional e n t r i e s that w e r e n e c e s s a r y ,e . g . Planetary g e a r s . P o w e r t r a n s m i s s i o n . Mechanical engineering
621.833.6
G e a r s , planetary. P o w e r t r a n s m i s s i o n . Mechanical engineering
621.833.6
T h e s e s l i p s would next be p a s s e d to the t y p i s t , who would make t h r e e
c o p i e s , one t o be filed in e a c h i n d e x e r ' s alphabetic index of the U . D . C .
A s i m i l a r procedure worked with the alphabetical s y s t e m , although in
t h i s c a s e Mr. Hadlow had the added responsibility of checking that a newheading w a s not, in fact, a synonym for a heading that w a s already inthe authority l i s t .

- 27 -

With Uniterm the procedure was slightly different, in that theindexers entered on their master index cards (see Fig. 1) the code
numbers of the uniterms (see Chapter 5). When it was necessary to
use a new term, they would not have a number to use, so they wrote
the term instead.

At the completion of the indexing of each group of

documents, the master index cards were passed to Miss Warburton,
who looked through the cards to find any new terms that had been used.
Having checked that the term was not synonymous with a term alreadyin use, she would allocate to it the appropriate code number and enter
this number on the master index card.
In spite of our best endeavours before starting the programme, notonly of those closely concerned with the project but of many otherindividuals who were kind enough to comment on the original proposals,
we came up against many difficulties that had not been envisaged.

Thequestion of the recorded time as compared to the working time has alreadybeen discussed, but probably our main difficulty came in getting started
with the indexing.

This is illustrated by the fact that whereas we started

indexing in April 1958, it was not until the end of January 1959, nearlyten months later, that Mr. Sharp and Mr. Hadlow had completed theirfirst 2,000 documents.

By this time most difficulties had been solved

and they only took about thirteen months to do a further 4,000 documentseach.
It proved, for instance, quite impossible to plunge into indexing byfour systems at once, that is to say we could not carry out the indexing
by the main and subsidiary systems from the start.

The compromise

adopted was that the first 100 documents of each indexer were done only
by U . D . C .
system,The next hundred were done with alphabetical as the mainwith U . D . C . as the only subsidiary system.

Then we did a

- 28 -

hundred documents by facet with U . D . C . and alphabetical as subsidiarysystems and finally we did the fourth hundred with Uniterm as a main
system and the other three systems as subsidiaries.
At this stage it was clear that with the facet classification we were
getting into a complete mess and a technical revision of the schedules
was necessary, together with some procedural alterations.

Whilethis work was being undertaken, indexing proceeded, albeit somewhat
slowly, with the other systems but no facet indexing was done of thenext 400 documents. During this stage it also became obvious that we
had to tighten our control of the form of headings in the alphabeticalsubject catalogue, and it was at this stage we made up our first set ofrules, as discussed later in Chapter 4. As a result of these r u l e s , it
was necessary to alter many of the headings already in use. The U . D . C .
schedules which we were using suffered from inadequate alphabeticalindexes, and as a result there was a continual stream of minordifficulties.

In general, however, U . D . C . did not present the major

problems which we encountered with the facet and the alphabeticalsystems, although this, no doubt, was partly due to the several y e a r s
experience which Mr. Sharp had in starting and maintaining a U . D . C .
catalogue in his previous post.

The Uniterm system at this stage was

perfectly straightforward and it can be said that, as far as the indexers
were concerned, they encountered only very minor problems with thissystem throughout the project.
With the revision of the facet schedules completed, we resumed
indexing by this system, but again ran into difficulties, this time withthe freedom that had been given to change t e r m s from substantives into
adjectives, which caused resultant difficulties in the chain index (as- 29 discussed in Chapter 4). This was a problem that should,. I feel, havebeen forseen

by us

but it had never been raised in any discussions

or in any papers dealing with facet classification.

The alterations which

we had to make more or less invalidated all the work that had been done
so far, and to be able to use this earlier indexing, we were involved ina considerable amount of revision. However, as previously indicated,from this time onwards, the facet schedules remained unaltered and we
had no further major problems in indexing by this method. N
As indexing continued, the original rules for the alphabetical subject
indexing appeared to be too restrictive and we had to make some slight
modifications.

This occurred at the end of the first stage of indexing

but did not seriously affect the earlier indexing that had been done.
Gradually the number of problems associated with the U . D . C . also
declined and by the commencement of the second stage of indexing( i . e . documents 6001 - 12,000), we were in the clear with all systems.
It is difficult to know exactly how to a s s e s s our experience insetting up these systems, because few people appear to have attempted
to review objectively their own experience.

In 1959 there was publishedthe results of an investigation in Germany into the costs incurred inindexing by U . D . C . (Ref. 8), and in this case it was found that six months
work was required before the system was reasonably well established.
From this it would appear that our time of approximately 9 months toestablish three systems (it being accepted that Uniterm created no
problems) was not unreasonable, even though at the time I was considerably
worried at the delay in reaching a stable situation. However, there is no
doubt but that it would have been most unwise to attempt to proceed more
rapidly with the indexing without first solving the problems that arose.