United States Department of Commerce • John T. Connor, Secretary

National Bureau of Standards • A. V. Astin, Director

Cooperation, Convertibility, and Compatibility Among

Information Systems: A Literature Review

Madeline M. Henderson, John S. Moats,

and Mary Elizabeth Stevens

Institute for Applied Technology

National Bureau of Standards Washington, D.C.

and

Simon M. Newman

Office of Documentation

National Academy of Sciences

National Research Council

National Bureau of Standards Miscellaneous Publication 276

Issued June 15, 1966

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C, 20402 - Price $2
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-60028
Contents

Page

1. Introduction 1

1.1. Background 1 1.2. Scope of this report 2

1.3. Definition of documentation 4

1.4. Definitions of cooperation, compatibility,

and convertibility 6

1.5. Increased growth and complexity of in- formation resources 6

2. Early developments in coordination and co- operation 7

2.1. Historical background 7

2.2. Role of the Federal Government 9

2.3. Role of national organizations 16

2.4. Role of international groups 20

2.5. Role of conferences and meetings on

documentation 22

3. Current operations and proposed activities 25

3.1. Background 25

3.2. Current activities in Federal agencies 25

3.3. Traditional cooperative activities 26

3.4. Dissemination and publication of secondary

sources 27

3.4.1. Listings of monographic publications- 27

3.4.2. Listings of periodicals and periodical

articles 29

3.4.3. Listings of reports of Government

agencies 29

3.4.4. Abstracting and indexing services and publications 32

3.4.5. Clearinghouses 39

3.4.6. Copyright and translation problems 42

3.5. Acquisition and exchange of publications 45

3.5.1. Interlibrary loans 46

3.5.2. The Farmington and other exchange

plans 47

3.5.3. Photo duplication services 49

3.5.4. Depository libraries 50

3.5.5. Cooperative exchange of data 50

3.6. Analysis and identification 51

3.6.1. Physical identification—descriptive

cataloging 51

3.6.2. Content identification—subject cata- loging 54

Page

3. Current operations and proposed activities—Con.

3.6. Analysis and identification-—Continued

3.6.3. Cooperative and centralized cata- loging 60

3.6.4. Cataloging rules and guidelines 61

3.6.5. Use of machines for description and

identification 63

3.7. Systematization and terminology control.. 66

3.7.1. Thesauri 67

3.7.2. Classification schemes 72

3.7.3. Interchange of indexing languages 77

3.8. Storage, search, and selective dissemination. 84

3.9. Standardization 86

3.9.1. Programs of Federal Government

agencies 87

3.9.2. Programs of the American Standards

Association (ASA) 88

3.9.3. Programs of the International Standards Organization 91

3.9.4. Programs of other organizations 93

4. Problem areas 95

4.1. General problem areas 95

4.1.1. Difficulties of problem definition 96

4.1.2. Problems of language 98

4.1.3. Consistency, reliability, and relevancy

in indexing 102

4.1.4. Problems of user acceptance and

human factors 104

4.2. Special problems raised by changes in the nature of the materials to be handled 107

4.3. Special problems raised by the prospects for mechanization .. 110

4.3.1. Machine language and bibliographic

information 111

4.3.2. Storage requirements 113

4.3.3. Problems of input 114

4.3.4. Character sets for machine processing 116

4.3.5. Internal processing and programming

languages 117

5. Implications for further progress 118

Appendix: List of references cited and selective bibliography 124

iii

Cooperation, Convertibility, and Compatibility Among

Information Systems: A Literature Review

Madeline M. Henderson, John S. Moats, Mary Elizabeth

Stevens, and Simon M. Newman

The purpose of the study of the literature on which this report is based was to examine

those problems in the field of documentation and in the operation of information systems

which could possibly be solved or alleviated by some greater measure of cooperation,

convertibility, or compatibility among systems, particularly those systems for handling

scientific and technical information supported in whole or in part by the United States Government. An account is given of early developments and general background information about organizations active in cooperative documentation efforts. Current cooperative

activities are then discussed in terms of dissemination and publication of secondary sources, acquisition and exchange of publications, analysis and identification, systematization and

terminology control, storage and search, and standardization. General problem areas,

special problems created by changes in the nature of the documentary materials to be

handled and special problems raised by the prospects for mechanization are then discussed. A final section raises questions with regard to the implications for future progress. Key words : Documentation, scientific and technical information, information centers,

libraries, mechanized information systems, convertibility, abstracting,

indexing, cataloging, technical reports, translations, cooperative acquisitions, information exchange, standardization.

1. Introduction

1.1. Background

There are two principal developments that have

converged, since the close of World War II, to in- fluence the promotion of and participation in

greater cooperation, collaboration, and coordination in the handling of recorded scientific and

technical information. These two developments

have made the problems of such cooperation an

area of sharply increased need and of challenging new opportunities to the U.S. Government, the

scientific community and its professional societies,

and business and industry. The first development

is the large-scale involvement of the Government

itself both in sponsoring and in supporting re- search and development efforts, with accompanying recognition of its responsibility to make

public, as promptly and widely as possible, the re- sults of such efforts. The second development is the technological ad- vance that has occurred in information processing,

with enormous potentialities for radically new

systems and techniques. New opportunities arise

from the successful use of machines to assemble,

process, list, store, retrieve, and display records of

various sorts ; from the development of techniques

for handling scientific and technical literature by

clerical and machine manipulation, and from the

development of new, unconventional, and less for- mal means for publication and dissemination.

A major reason for the increasing concern about

possibilities for improved cooperation, convertibility, and compatibility among information sys- tems is the problem of the so-called information

explosion. Despite controversy as to the nature

and extent of the steadily growing volume of scientific and technical information, it is indisputable

that today the amount of literature that must be

checked for possible pertinency far exceeds the

the capacity of individuals to maintain awareness

or to make full use of potentially related work.

The number of scientists and engineers falls short of meeting demands; this means that there

is a heavy premium on reducing duplication of

efforts and conserving the technical man's time to the maximum extent possible. More effective

utilization of information resources in science and

technology can contribute to more effective use of

scientific manpower. Such improved use of in- formation is indeed a major concern of the Committee on Scientific and Technical Information

(COSATI) of the Federal Council for Science

and _ Technology (FCST), The Office of the

President.

The present report is the outgrowth of suggestions advanced by the Ad Hoc Interagency Study

Group on Language Compatibility in Mechanized

Storage and Retrieval Systems. At the instigation of the National Science Foundation, this

Study Group was established in 1961 to provide, on an informal working-level basis, a mechanism

1
for investigation and interchange of information

among representatives of agencies already in process of mechanizing their information handling operations, contemplating such action in the near

future, or heavily involved in the interchange of

information with agencies that have such mechanized systems. During the course of early deliberations of the Study Group it was decided that it would be well to undertake, for the guidance of the

Group's members and as a source of clues to problem areas and possible solutions, a review of the

present state of cooperation, convertibility and

compatibility among information centers. Subsequently, following FCST's establishment

of a Committee on Scientific Information (precursor of COSATI) its members reviewed the objectives and activities of the Study Group. In a

letter dated April 19, 1963, addressed to the members of the Study Group, Admiral Martell, Chairman of the Committee, stated in part : "I am impressed not only with the importance of the need

for cooperation, convertibilty and, if possible, ulti- mate compatibility among the many federal information systems, but also with the need for speed

in isolating the many detailed problems which

will need resolution as we attempt these necessary

steps. I have asked Dr. Alexander to continue

his chairmanship and have included your committee as a technical subcommittee of the Committee on Information." 1 In addition to thus co-opting the original Study

Group, the Chairman approved the task of

assembling a bibliography and preparing a report on the state of cooperation, convertibility, and

compatibility among information retrieval sys- tems in the Government. However, the literature

is not easily divided between Government and

non-Government activities. "The communication

problems of Government are inextricably intertwined with those outside the Government. Both

the Government and the non-Government communities are concerned with the same total body of

information; the progress made in each contributes vitally to the other." 2 Since the lessons to be learned from a study of

past actions in either case should be equally applicable to present problems, a mutually acceptable arrangement was made to cover information

systems in general. Under this arrangement, the

National Science Foundation supported the intraGovernment review by the National Bureau of

Standards and the Office of Documentation, National Academy of Sciences-National Research

Council, made provision for coverage of the extra- Government activities. A review of the literature has therefore been

undertaken to determine what precedents for improved cooperation, convertibility, and compati1 Alexander and Newman, 1963 ([10], Appendix H. Note:

bibliographic citations are listed in the order of the number shown

in brackets in the appendix, p. 124 ff).

2 President's Scientific Advisory Committee, 1962 [465], p. 33.

bility have occurred, to identify typical problems

and difficulties, and to provide a realistic perspective for attacks on current problems.

1.2. Scope of This Report

The motivation for organization of and the

name adopted by the original Ad Hoc Study

Group emphasize its primary interest in machine

language compatibility and, by extension, in the

possibilities for cooperation, convertibility, and

compatibility between mechanized systems, particularly those in operation or planned by the Government agencies engaged in large-scale operations

of information dissemination. There are three

major reasons, however, why these primary in- terests have needed to be broadened.

First is the recognition that the problems of

mechanization are but one aspect of the whole

complex cycle of the generation, dissemination,

and use of scientific and technical information.

This recognition implies that language compatibility at many levels (initial recording, language

of announcement of availability, cataloging, classi- fying or indexing, encoding for storage, transmission via communication links, and the like) affects and is affected by many different operations

in the broad area of documentation. Also implied

is the high probability that the problems

of handling the report literature, with which the

majority of the Government's informationhandling agencies are most directly concerned,

cannot safely be divorced from the problems of

handling the traditional literature : books, serials,

and monographs.

In particular, the question of Government re- sponsibility for the preparation, announcement,

and dissemination of information on the results

of Government-sponsored research cannot be

divorced from the missions of the three great

Government-supported National Libraries: The

Library of Congress (LC), The National Agricultural Library (NAL), and The National Library of Medicine (NLM). Obviously, in these

three libraries, the techniques for handling the

traditional and the newer forms must be blended.

Similarly, the network aspects of the overall problem should not be neglected, which involves many

small special-purpose information centers, offices, and libraries as well as the large organizations and

national centers and services.

The second major reason has to do with the

characteristics of machines used to date and the

fact that currently there are very few instances

of fully mechanized systems of any considerable

size or with more than quite limited operational

experience. In terms of machine characteristics,

there is a wide variety of machines available for

prospective as well as present applications, but

beyond the punched card stage, machines are seldom compatible even within the "family" of a

single manufacturer. There is a true Babel of

2
programming and machine languages; there is little or no compatibility between words or record

lengths and formats ; and auxiliary equipment to achieve conversions between one type of machineusable record and another is limited as to availability, is often costly and is cumbersome and slow

in performance.

With respect to the limited number of mechanized systems from which practical lessons might

be learned, it should be noted that despite the

emphasis placed upon the potentialities of machine

techniques over the past decade, very little real

advantage has as yet been achieved. With rare

exceptions, search and retrieval systems that have

been mechanized in whole or in part are simply

". . . scaled up and computerized versions of

punched card searching systems based on index

term matching. The overall performance of such

systems, in terms of the generally used precision

and recall measures, appears to be very low, and

not adequate to provide a thorough searching

capability." 3 Large-scale integrated machine systems such as MEDLAES (Medical Ziterature Analysis and

Retrieval /System) or STAR (Scientific and technical Aerospace Reports) are still in various

stages of development and have yet to prove their

comparative efficiency in overall operation, despite

the promise and challenge they offer. Thus, the

opinions expressed by Jahoda in 1958, Adkinson

in 1960, Herbert in 1962, and an Arthur D. Little

team in 1963 have almost equal pertinence today

:

"Mr. Gerald Jahoda reported on the results of a questionnaire survey of some 39 correlative or coordinate indexing systems now in operation,

mostly located in the United States. These sys- tems are relatively small. Over 80 percent of the

installations participating in the survey reported

collections of 20,000 or fewer documents. The sys- tems are not extensively used, since 60 percent

reported 200 or less inquiries per year. Finally,

there was a strong indication from the questionnaire responses that in the large majority of the

installations more traditional methods such as alphabetical subject indexing or conventional clas- sifications systems might have been used to equal

advantage." 4 "Thus far a large majority of the operating

systems that make use of some mechanized procedures are located within individual industrial

organizations. The subject matter encompassed

by any one system is fairly homogeneous and for

the most part it is chemical or biochemical in nature, fields in which the information itself has a more apparent structure and is more easily coded

for mechanized systems than is information in

other fields .... Very few of the operating sys- tems cover more than 25,000 documents, and only

two or three cover more than 100,000 documents

all very small systems compared with the problem

8 Arthur D. Little, Inc., 1963 [344], p. 2.

* Stevens and de Grolier 1959 [544], p. 809.

of handling all scientific literature, or even all the

literature of one discipline. Experience with such

systems may be needed to handle very large

volumes of material." 5 "The fact is that relatively few information re- trieval systems have been put to work. There are very few data available to show how various IE,

systems significantly excel each other, or even do

better than a resourceful librarian." 6 "It may be possible to scale up a punched card

searching system originally designed to work on

a digital computer with perhaps 30,000 documents

without too much difficulty. But scaling it up an

order of magnitude further, to 300,000 documents,

will in all probability so magnify and distort the

existing difficulties that the feasibility of the procedure becomes uncertain." 7 The third of the major reasons for extending the

scope of this report beyond the "present state of

cooperation, convertibility, and compatibility

among information retrieval systems in the Government" 8 was the paucity of examples found in

the literature search that would directly pertain to the problems of machine language compatibility.

The small number of examples of cooperation, convertibility, and compatibility, in the special terms

of machine language and machine application

compatibility, has led to a preponderance of cover- age in other areas of cooperation, especially those

where future needs for greater compatibility and

convertibility can be foreseen in terms of machine

potentialities. For this reason, the coverage of more traditional library techniques and requirements may seem at first glance to be out of balance

;

yet it well may be that improvement in the handling of scientific and technical information can

be achieved as much by extended efforts in these areas as in specific agreements between mechanized

systems. It is important to remember how in- terdependent the information generating, processing, and utilization processes are. The organization of material for this report has

also been difficult in other respects. It has seemed

desirable first to give a relatively general background with respect to agencies, national and in- ternational organizations, formal and informal

groups and individuals active in efforts which may

improve cooperation, convertibility, or compatibility, leading toward the ultimate goal of standardization. Next, we have attempted to discuss

these and similar efforts in the framework of the

typical documentation and information handling

operations. We have included consideration of

the present and potential effects of mechanization

and of typical problems and difficulties in each of

these sections. However, we have also attempted

to reemphasize problem areas and difficulties in a

separate section, at the risk of some repetition and

redundancy.

5 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 104-105, report by B. W. Adkinson.

6 Herbert. 1962 [253], p. 22.

' Arthur D. Little, Inc., 1963 [344], p. 16-17.

8 Alexander and Newman, 1963 [9], Appendix H (italic supplied).

3
In the concluding section on implications for

future progress, certain somewhat controversial

points have undoubtedly been raised. These reflect points which have been made in the literature

and which, in the opinion of the reviewers merit some consideration in terms of continuing concern

for cooperation, convertibility, and compatibility.

The authors, however, are responsible for selecting

the quotations which have been included. The

material covered in this report represents primarily information from a selective survey of the

literature published through December 1963. In

a few instances, however, pertinent material published later has also been included.

Interesting anomalies of viewpoint, procedure

and knowledge of other (but often collateral)

practices run through the literature we have

scanned, selected, and assembled. It is always

difficult, even when teaming together authors of

several different backgrounds but all with some

specialized experience in the field, to avoid inadvertent omissions and misplaced emphases in

coverage and treatment. The present report was circulated in draft form

to the members of the Ad Hoc Committee in February 1965, with a request for their criticisms and

comments to be submitted by March 31. Wherever possible, those suggestions received for cor- rection and improvement have been incorporated.

Other inaccuracies may nevertheless remain. It should be noted also that the inclusion of information on various specific activities and the omission

of others is not intended to reflect an endorsement

as such of those that are included nor in any sense an adverse evaluation of those that are not

mentioned.

The purpose of the study on which this report is based was to examine those problems in the field of

documentation and in the operation of information systems which could possibly be solved or

alleviated by some greater measure of cooperation,

convertibility, or compatibility between systems.

It might be valuable to start by defining documentation and by delineating what we mean by co- operation, convertibility, and compatibility among

information systems. We can then enumerate

the various activities pertinent to the field, pointing out which documentation activities are sus- ceptible to cooperation and therefore are pertinent

to the scope of this report.

1.3. Definition of Documentation

The term "documentation" is considerably older

than its present-day implications. It is reported

that the delegates to the Congress of Archivists

and Librarians held in Brussels in 1910 "admitted

confusion regarding the use of the word documention." 9 The confusion persists despite the

mushrooming of the field and many new additional facets. As a result little agreement on

standard meanings for terms has yet been reached.

"Ludington, 1954 [351]i, p. 196.

Individuals and professional societies have published glossaries of terms in documentation and

data processing, but little if any agreement on the use of such terms has found its way into the liter- ature of the field. However, we can quote several

definitions to illustrate what is generally meant

by the term "documentation."

Banganathan has traced the genesis of the term

as follows : "From the turn of the present century,

bibliographers began to pay attention to microthought (i.e., articles in current periodicals) and

not merely to macro-thought (i.e., whole books).

This was necessitated by large-scale promotion of

research work 'in-series' and the need for communicating nascent thought to all workers in the

field as and when each little quantum of it got

created. . . . Micro-bibliography and economical

service of articles by photographic methods started

to attract active attention about a generation ago. At that time a generic name was needed to cover

these two activities. . . . This genesis of the term

'Documentation' makes it clear that the materials

coming within its purview are printed and published ones arising in the course of the creation of new thought by persons working in the forefront

of knowledge. . . ." 10 The letterhead of the Federation Internationale

de Documentation (FID) carries the message

"Documentation egal collection et conservation,

classification et selection, dissemination et utilisa- tion de toute information." The term classifica- tion, while ambiguous, most often refers to the

step of indexing or tagging a document with some

representation of its subject content. Two additional steps, those of systematization and recording, are of particular interest from the standpoint

of cooperation, convertibility, and compatibility

among information handling systems. Systematization is the construction, organization and maintenance of some form of schedule or authority list setting forth the tags or indexes, while recording

is the construction and maintenance of transcriptions which relate the documents to the index tags.

These are operations especially sensitive to the in- troduction of new techniques and mechanization

which have given new emphases to the field of

documentation since World War II. The new status of the field is reflected in the

definition of documentation in Webster's New International Dictionary, Third Edition, as "the as- sembling, coding, and disseminating of recorded

knowledge comprehensively treated as an integral

procedure utilizing semantics, psychological and

mechanical aids, and techniques of reproduction

including microcopy for giving documentary in- formation maximum accessibility and usability."

Another definition, by Helen L. Brownson, calls documentation the "art of facilitating the use of

recorded, specialized knowledge through the presentation, reproduction, publication, dissemination, collection, storage, subject analysis, organi10 Ranganathan, 1952 [470], p. 105-106.

4
zation and retrieval." 11 In their textbook on

information storage and retrieval, Becker and

Hayes define documentation by pointing out what

it is not: it is not concerned with librarianship so much as with the systems and tools of librarianship; it is not concerned with the operation of

information systems so much as with their analysis

and design.12 Again, Allen Kent in his book on mechanical

information retrieval considers documentation activities as the unit operations which comprise an

information system : ( 1 ) acquisition of source materials; (2) analysis of these documents to serve

as a basis for orderly organization to facilitate

! the identification of wanted information on demand; (3) terminology and subject heading con-

' trol to facilitate search by the use of language

I based information retrieval systems; (4) recording the results of the analysis on a searchable

11 As contributed to the American Documentation Institute, see Wagner, 1960 [618], p. 108. "Becker and Hayes, 1963 [48], p. 43-44.

medium; (5) storage of source documents, extracts of documents, abstracts and bibliographic

references; (6) analysis of questions put to the in- formation retrieval system and development of

search strategy ; (7) conducting a search ; and (8)

delivery of the results of a search.13 If the above definitions of documentation are of

service in delineating the field, then the activities

of particular interest to this report are as follows

:

(1) dissemination, including publication of sec- ondary sources such as abstract journals, an- nouncement bulletins and indexes ; (2) acquisition

and exchange of publications; (3) analysis, leading to descriptive cataloging and subject cataloging; (4) systematization, including terminology

control and standardization; (5) storage, at least in some aspects such as standardization of formats,

maintenance of cooperative deposits, ability to convert from one form of storage medium to another, ease of adding or deleting items, system

modifications based on storage capacities and the

13 Kent, 1962 [312], 76-78; see also [309], p. 110.

Table 1. Documentation Processes Process 1. COMMUNICATE

A. Direct:

Basic data

Primary publication

B. Indirect:

Tables, Compendia

Secondary publication

Information about sources

Subprocesses : 1. Identify-Select

2 . Transcribe-Encode

3. Issue-Publish Process 3. ACQUIRE

A. Basic data

B. Primary references

C. Secondary references

D. Information about sources

Process 2. ROUTE

A. Basic data

B. Primary reference

C. Secondary reference

Subprocesses

:

1. Identify

2. Select addressees

3. Disseminate

Process 4. STORE

A. Basic data

B. Primary references

C. Secondary references

D. Information about sources E. Information about needs

F. Information about searches

Subprocesses

:

1. Identify need

2. Locate sources

3. Order

4. Receive

Process 5. SEARCH

A. Basic data

B. Primary references

C. Secondary sources D. Information about needs

Subprocesses:

1 . Organize for search

2. Organize for storage

3. Prepare and store

4. Maintain-revise-res tore Process 6. RETRIEVE

A. Selected items or values of basic data

B. Selected primary references

C. Selected secondary references

D. Selected information about needs

Subprocesses : Subprocesses

:

1. Specify selection criteria 1. Locate

2. Define scope, relationships of selec- 2. Remove-reproduce

tion criteria, strategy 3. Prepare for use

3. Conduct search 4. Distribute

4. Reformulate specification, iterate as necessary

5. Reject-select

208-371—

6

5
like; and (6) searching for documents, in the

sense of "where to find what." Since the product

of searching can be facts, references, or documents

themselves, the interest of this report lies with

what is obtained and the degree of its compatibility

with the products of other systems, rather than

the detailed techniques of how the product is obtained.

We might portray documentation activities as shown in table 1. Those activities of special in- terest here, as shown by italics, are susceptible to some degree of cooperation, convertibility, or compatibility. We can now define these terms for the

purposes of this report.

1.4. Definitions of Cooperation, Compatibility,

and Convertibility

Cooperation involves collaborative effort or sharing between organizations in actual processing

of materials for information systems or in ex- change of the products of such processing. Cooperation ranges from sharing of the load of

coverage of a particular subject field by means of

interorganization loans, through sharing the abstracting coverages and workloads, to joint effort in the establishment of word lists, thesauri, and

indexing standards. An especially important

area of cooperation is in the coordination of in- formation about sources—what is available and

where.

Systems are considered to be compatible when

the results of processing in one system are immediately and directly usable by other organizations

having similar but not necessarily identical sys- tems. Where the products of systems in collaborating organizations can be used interchangeably

by those organizations without special efforts or conventions, the systems are compatible. An obvious and early example of such compatibility is the practice of adding directly to an existing card

catalog the cards supplied by the Library of Congress. However, it should be noted that "the most

challenging problems for company, as well as for

society, government, or commercial services, are those of compatibility between systems for indexing, retrieving, and disseminating information

and between the languages of those systems.

There is yet, however, no meeting of the minds

even as to the meaning and purpose of such

compatibility." 14 Where results and products of processing in one

system are usable in another system, but not immediately or directly, the systems may or may not

be convertible one to another. Various operations of transcription, transliteration, re-recording, re-encoding or rearrangement have to be

achieved, particularly by clerical or mechanical

means, in the maintenance of convertible systems.

An example of convertibility is the mechanized

"Anderson. 1962 [29], p. 114.

rearrangement of a classified index listing into an

alphabetized listing.

Compatiblity and convertibility may apply

either mutually or in only one direction between

and among information systems.

1.5. Increased Growth and Complexity of

Information Resources

Interest in applying some measure of cooperation or coordination to the activities of documentation has been quickened, as noted earlier, by the

growing volume of publication. In addition, the 1 increasing specialization and yet interdisciplinary

nature of research areas have combined to augment this same interest. In the case of scientific and technical developments, the volume of new

materials is beyond the capacity of most organi-;

zations to acquire, issue prompt notice of accession,

classify or index, disseminate, store, and subsequently select and retrieve documents within the

time scale, economics and precision necessary for

efficient service and effective use. Patent offices and the legal profession compound these problems

with pressures for immediate detailed documentation of all past publications which, in these areas, do not lose pertinency because of age. There have been expressions of doubt as to the

size and nature of the increased flow of information, and the possible extent of application of computer technology to the handling of this flow.15 A i particularly provocative reaction is that of Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, who has summarized his opinion

as follows: "The geometrical rate of increase in

scientific and technological publications ... is commensurate with the increase in scientific and

technological manpower and is in fact, nothing more than its direct result. . . . The only areas

in which the [information] retrieval situation is intrinsically worsening are those which exhibit

the 'cumulative effect' especially the areas of law,

patent searching, and library acquisitions. But

in these areas the natural remedy lies in a change

of policy and practices rather than in a revolutionary change of the retrieval operations." 16 Reactions to this forthright opinion ranged from

argument about the complexity of the information flow and the crisis which it engenders for

librarians and information specialists to state- ments of belief that information handling facili- ties were generally keeping pace with the increased

volume. An interesting point was made by Philip

Abelson, editor of Science, who wrote that in leading areas of scientific discovery, information re- trieval presents no problem, and there is fast and

complete interchange of information by personal

visit, telephone, postal correspondence, and ex- change of mimeographed preprints of papers. For

15 A variety of views with respect to the information "crisis" are incorporated in the report on the hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Reorganization and Internal Organizations, 1962

[594], p. 41-49.

19 Bar-Hillel, 1963 [45], p. 98.

6
those engaged in technology, who wish to apply

the results of basic research, and especially for

those concerned with patents, the problem is quite

different and a more serious difficulty exists.17 But given the problem of the volume and interdisciplinary nature of scientific and technical in- formation, whether we tag it as a crisis or an ex- plosion or not, the fact remains that interest has

been aroused in the possibilities for increased co- operation, compatibility, and convertibility in and

among information systems. We shall review here

the early steps in these directions, before discussing more fully the current operations and proposed

activities in these areas.

2. Early Developments in Coordination

and Cooperation

2.1. Historical Background

The need for cooperation by governments, in- dustry, professional societies, and individual sci- entists in the handling of scientific and technical

information is not a new problem. The history of

the development of science is all too abundantly

marked by instances of communication failures,

barriers to communication effectiveness and conse- quent replications of effort and rediscoveries of

the same inventions and ideas. Disclosure of the

results of research and development efforts has al- ways been prerequisite to progress in scholarship,

basic scientific understanding and technological

applications of the results of new knowledge.

Originally, disclosure involved principally the

scholarly obligations of the individual investigator. The Royal Society, founded in England in

the 17th Century, included among its functions the

responsibility for communication and disclosure

of scientific information. It is the prototype for

responsibilities of professional societies and of the

scientific community, then and since. Thus, until

approximately the last two decades, the handling

of scientific and technical information continued

to be generally subsumed under obligations as- sumed by individual and professional societies to publish and disseminate disclosures of research

and development results and under responsibilities

for the collection and (at least to some extent) the

cataloging of published literature, as assumed

by libraries, museums, universities, and other

institutions. Interest and concern for the effective disclosure

of scientific information has had a relatively long

history in the United States. "We might go back

to Washington's Farewell Address, in which the

injunction is laid down "to promote knowledge."

The Smithsonian Institution was created in 1846

as a result of a bequest from James Smithson to the United States for the establishment of a center "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge."

Joseph Henry, America's most distinguished

" Abelson, 1963 [1], p. 319.

scientist at the time, served as Secretary for the

Smithsonian for 32 years. His principles still govern it; ". . . to facilitate in every way the promotion of science. . . . and enlarging the bounds

of human thought." No branch of knowledge is excluded from the Smithsonian's attention. Some

10,000 scholarly books and monographs bear the

Institution's imprint. Scientists and scholars in

increasing numbers use its library of more than a

million titles, many of them now on deposit at the

Library of Congress.

That venerable institution was founded at the

beginning of the 19th century, when the original

library—"shipped, by the Grace of God," as a bill of lading reads—arrived from London in 1801, a

year after the books had been ordered by Congress.

The Act of 1800 establishing the Library provided

for the "purchase of such books as may be neces- sary for the use of Congress at the said city of

Washington and for fitting up an apartment for

containing them. The first significant material of a scientific nature came with the purchase by Congress in 1815 of the 7,000 volume personal library

of Thomas Jefferson." 1 Today the Library of Congress includes far more

than books. It houses newspapers on microfilm,

motion pictures, historical items such as election

posters and photographs, the finest surviving

Gutenberg Bible, and the like. In all, the library

is full to the bursting point with 43,500,000 items.

Of particular interest to this report is the collec- tion of scientific and technical material which was

started at the Smithsonian and transferred to the

Library of Congress in 1866.

An additional example of attempts at cooperation and collaboration by the Smithsonian and the

Library of Congress involved library catalogs of

holdings. Charles C. Jewett, librarian at the Institution in its early years, saw a need for a method

by which catalogs, at that time issued in book form,

might be issued cheaply and promptly and without

endless duplication by separate libraries. If a technique based on the "stereotype" could be developed, it would be possible to assemble a national

collection of stereotypes, each representing a sep- arate book, and to combine these as desired for

printing the catalogs of individual libraries. "The title of every book and of each distinct edition is stereotyped upon a separate plate. The

author's name also stands by itself. Each plate

shows at a glance the heading to which it belongs.

It is obvious that these plates may be placed to- gether in alphabetical or other order, as may be

desired. They are mounted on blocks, for printing

like other stereotype plates. It is proposed to preserve the plates or blocks in alphabetical order

of the titles, so as to be able readily to insert

additional titles, in their proper places, and then

to reprint the whole catalogue. By these means,

the chief cost of republication (that of composition) together with the trouble of revision and

» Sherrod, 1962 [528], p. 35.

7
correction of the press, would, except for new titles,

be avoided." 2 "Congress, on the recommendation of the Library

Committee, made an appropriation for the practical testing of the plan in its application to the

Library of Congress." 3 The resulting sample cat- alog, printed in 1854, constitutes a handsome piece

of 19th century printing. Unfortunately, the

plates warped in storage and the information on them was lost. Not until some 50 years later did

American libraries get the benefit of a central source of bibliographic information with standardized printed catalog cards based on very large

collections.4 Jewett was also instrumental in calling and pre- siding over a convention of librarians in New York

in 1853, "the first convention of the kind, not only

in this country, but, so far as I know, in the

world." 5 We shall mention some of the actions of

this 1853 Convention in section 2.5, but because the

International Exchange Service also involved, historically, the collaboration of the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress, we note here

a communication from Mons. A. Vattemare on the

subject of international exchanges and the chronology and coverage of cooperative efforts in this area from 1832 to that date. Several of his remarks are of particular interest

"What I aim at is, the establishment of a regular

and permanent system of exchange between governments, of not only the useless duplicates of their

public libraries, but everything emanating from

the genius of a nation, so as to form in the capitals

of the civilized nations, public international li- braries that would become a permanent exhibition

of the intellectual power of each of them, a lasting

World's Fair of the genius of nations. . . . Let us have a central agency on each Continent, which

shall be in connection with each other to negotiate

these exchanges ; let us have a monthly publication

in English, French, and German, which shall publish the proceedings of the agency, and the titles of

the books or objects exchanged. . . . Let me close this letter by expressing my grateful acknowledgment towards the States and institutions of the

Union, that have so readily and so nobly given a helping hand to my efforts, and tell them that, in

my conviction, the time is not distant when they

will reap the advantages of that generous and per- severing support ; that the little that has been done

to this time is only the earnest of what is yet to come. As for the private individuals who have

seconded my labors, the number is too great to mention them here, and they have already found

in their conscience and patriotism the reward of

their acts." 6

3 "Proceedings of the Librarians' Convention . . . 1853," 1915

[466],, p. 26.

3 Ibid, p. 29.

4 Clapp, 1968 [116], p. 2.

5 "Proceedings of the Librarians' Convention . . . 1853," 1915

[466], p. 13.

« Ibid, pp. 53-55.

Under the guidance of Joseph Henry, the Smithsonian Institution made early provision for the

international exchange of publications. Since the

scientific literature collection was transferred to the Library of Congress the program has been

steadily extended, until today there exist some

17,000 or more agreements with other governments, research centers, laboratories, academic and

other institutions (including more than a hundred

in the Soviet Union) for exchanges of holdings.7 Libraries throughout the world have been enriched

by the publications received through this exchange

service from many institutions in the United

States and, in turn, the libraries of the United

States have benefited from the publications re- ceived from the institutions in foreign countries.8 Publications are sent to foreign countries on ex- change or as gifts by libraries, scientific societies,

educational institutions, and individuals. Shipments of publications are received from foreign

exchange bureaus for distribution in the United

States. This International Exchange Service, supported

by appropriations of the U.S. Congress from 1881

onward, became the official United States Agency

under the terms of the Brussels Convention of

1886 for the exchange of governmental, scientific,

and literary publications.9 A final example from Smithsonian history is of

interest both with respect to U.S. Government participation in international cooperation in documentation and with respect to compatibility

through the adoption of uniform practices.

Langley, discussing the sending of U.S. delegates

to the International Conference on a Catalogue of

Scientific Literature (July 1895, Royal Society, fj London) remarked that "as to the propriety and

feasibility of the United States taking part,

through the Smithsonian Institution, in the proj posed work by providing for the continuous cata- loguing of scientific literature published in the

United States ... I fully concur in the view of

the delegates . . . . 10 Other 19th century developments included the

establishment of the libraries that have become,

respectively, the National Library of Medicine and

the National Agricultural Library. The National

Library of Medicine "dates back to 1836, when its predecessor, the Library of the Surgeon General's

Office was established." 11 (An interesting his- torical account of NLM, including details of early

exchanges with other libraries and the earliest

predecessor of today's Index Medicus, the 1840

'Catalogue'—"quaintly inscribed on ruled paper

in roughly alphabetical order"—is given by j Schullian and Sogers, 1958 [507].)

At least some commentators, however, suggest

that "the history of the Army Medical Library

T U.S. House, 1959 [5861, p. 2, statement of L. Q. Mumford.

8 Smithsonian Institution, 1964 [538], p. 65. "True, 1946 [572], p. 53-54. M Rhees, 1901 [479], p. 1772.

11 National Library of Medicine, 1963 [412], p. 1.

8
as a great research institution dates back, not to

its founding in 1836, but to 1865 when John Shaw

Billings was an assistant to the Surgeon General." 12 Billings is noteworthy not only for his

accomplishments in the Library itself and for the

Index- Catalogue but for his early appreciation of

the need for union catalogs 13 and his pleas for

author accuracy and specificity in the writing of

titles.14 It is of interest, especially with respect to machine language compatibility, that Billings has

been credited as the co-father, with Hollerith, of

the notion of recording information into punched

cards, which can then be sorted mechanically, and

that the size of the Hollerith (IBM-type) punched

card was based, at Billings' suggestion, on the then

size of the U.S. dollar bill. 15 Larkey has com- mented on the Billings-Hollerith colloboration as follows : "It is not known if Billings ever thought

of applying the principle to bibliographic work,

but it would seem eminently fitting that it might

be so utilized." 16 Another early 19th century library, involving

both Government support and scientific and technical information interests, is that of the U.S.

Military Academy at West Point, New York. As

Captain Henry Coppee remarked in 1853, "The

institution which I have the honor to represent is certainly peculiar and unique—both sui juris and

sui generis—in that it is under the control of the

general government and that its special character

is military and scientific." 17 The U.S. Department of Agriculture Library

has, since its establishment in 1862, "emphasized

direct service to users . . . [the organic act states]

that it shall be the duty of the Commissioner of

Agriculture to acquire and preserve in his Department all information which he can obtain by means

of books and correspondence." 18 In addition,

he is to "diffuse useful information on subjects

connected with agriculture in the most general and

comprehensive sense of that word." 19 The 19th century also saw the first development

of an abstracting service, the assumption by professional societies of responsibilities for bibliographic services, the founding of library associations, and the first international activities in the

field of documentation. For example, "As early

as 1807 in the field of geology and mineralogy

. . . the first abstracting service was established

in Germany." 20 In 1858, the Royal Society began preparation of a "Manuscript Catalogue of

the Titles of Scientific Periodicals in All Languages," 21 and in 1877 the Library Association of

12 Metcalf et al., 1944 [380], p. vii.

13 Schullian and Rogers, 1958 [507], p. 16. "Rogers, 1962 [490]|, p. 704. "Larkey, 1953 [3221, private communication, Scott Adams.

"Larkey, 1953 [332], p. .34. " "Proceedings of the Librarians' Convention . . . 1853", 1915

[466], p. 16.

18 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 144, statement by F. E. Mohrhardt.

J »U.S. House, 1964 [589], p. 5.

20 U.S. House, 1959 [586]/, p. 99, statement of G. M. Conrad.

21 Murra, 1951 [401];, p. 29-30.

Great Britain was founded.22 In 1882, The American Association for the Advancement of Science

appointed aj Committee on Indexing Chemical

Literature and in 1893 a Congress of Chemists held

in Chicago proposed an International Committee

on Chemical Bibliography to investigate cooperative international indexing.23 In the remainder of this section on early developments and organizational background, we shall

discuss 20th century developments up to about

1960, and in a few cases we shall include even later instances as of general background interest with

respect to organizations active in cooperative documentation efforts.

2.2. Role of the Federal Government

Burgeoning activities in scientific research and

development brought about a need for extension

of the responsibility for disclosure of research re- sults from that of the scholar, the professional

society, and the learned institution. There was, and is, the need for disclosure as a necessary condition for proprietary rights to private industrial

exploitation, involving patent laws and copyright

requirements; disclosure as a responsibility of a publicly supported agency for dissemination to its supporters and the public; disclosure as required

by contractual provisions or in return for financial

support ; and disclosure as necessary to technological advancement in terms of special interests, ranging from the defense and security of a national

government, through governmental concerns for

public welfare, to the mutual advantages of commercial and private interests. The importance of effective handling of dis- closures of research results has received increased

recognition throughout the world since World

War II. In the United States, this period has

been marked by

(a) Prompt assumption of Governmental re- sponsibilities for the announcement of availability

of scientific and technical information stemming

directly from Government-acquired material or Government-reporting of research and development progress

(b) creation of information processing operations and organizations within U.S. Government

agencies to handle the information output of these

agencies and their contractors

(c) continuing concern on the part of both

Congressional and Executive branches of the U.S.

Government with the problems of achieving more

effective coordination and support of both con- ventional and newer methods of information control; and

(d) continuing concern with the effects of possible mechanization or automation of information

handling operations upon improved utilization of

recorded knowledge.

22 Bonn, 1959 [68], p. 1445.

23 Murra, 1951 [401], p. 31-33.

3
During the years of World War II, the research

and development programs of the Federal Government, especially those of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) and The Manhattan Project, included provision for the release

and interchange of classified information "among

a veritable army of civilian scientists, but the

dissemination was cumbersome because little effort was spent toward establishing and maintaining

bibliographic control." 24 As early as 1944, President Roosevelt requested

Dr. Vannevar Bush, Director of OSRD, to pre- pare recommendations for postwar continuation

of the "unique experiment of team-work and co- operation in coordinating scientific research and

in applying existing scientific knowledge to the

solution of technical problems" which OSRD represented. In particular, the first of four major

questions was, "What can be done, consistent with

military security, and with the prior approval of

the military authority, to make known to the world

as soon as possible the contributions which have

been made during our war effort to scientific knowledge?" 25 The resulting report, "Science-the Endless

Frontier," was submitted in July 1945 and served

as the impetus for the organization of new information processing activities, for consideration in

the Congress and elsewhere of the desirability of a Department of Science and Technology, and for

many of the functions now carried by the Office

of Science and Technology, The Federal Council

for Science and Technology, The National Science

Foundation, the Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information, and others. Examples of specific recommendations which

continue to be reflected in present activities or concerns are as follows : "The Government should

take an active role in promoting the international

flow of scientific information." 26 "Much of the information and experience ac- quired during the war is confined to the agencies

that gathered it. Except to the extent that military security dictates otherwise, such knowledge

should be spread upon the record for the benefit

of the general public." 27 "It is recommended that measures which will

encourage and facilitate the preparation and publication of reports be adopted forthwith by all agencies, governmental and private, possessing sci- entific information released from security control." 28 More generally, the recommendations for a National Research Foundation foreshadow much of

the structure and operations of NSF. Specifically,

with respect to scientific and technical information:

"Heald, 1952 [244], p. 138. "Letter of President Roosevelt, November 17, 1944, Bush, 1945 [91], p. viL » Bush, 1945 [91], p. 17. « Ibid, p. 22. * Ibid, p. 24.

"Division of Publications and /Scientific Collaboration—-this Division should be charged with en- couraging the publication of scientific knowledge

and promoting international exchange of scientific information." 29 "The Foundation should take all necessary and

proper steps

"(d) To provide for and assure the most comprehensive collection and dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge and information by

aids to libraries, bibliographic services, translating activities, etc *

_ "(i) To cooperate with the Army, Navy, and

civilian military research organizations for the

rapid interchange of information on basic sci- entific problems of use in national defense. It should coordinate its activities wherever possible

with these organizations to prevent unnecessary

duplication . . . (j) To assist industry and business, particularly small enterprises ... in obtaining scientific and technical information and guidance . . . " (1) To represent the United States of America

in effecting better international cooperation in sci- entific activities, to assist in the freer international

exchange of scentific and technical knowledge . . to help sponsor and finance international scientific,

congresses or associations." 30 The work leading to "Science—the Endless

Frontier" was accomplished with the aid of four

committees of consultants. The reports of two of

these committees are of special interest, that of

the Committee on Science and the Public Welfare,

Dr. Isaiah Bowman, Chairman, and that of the

Committee on Publication of Scientific Information, Dr. Irvin Stewart, Chairman.

The Bowman report includes as an appendix a

discussion of library aids and a summary of the

Committee's views on interlibrary cooperation, abstracting and translating services and bibliographic and reference services.! With respect to the first, the Committee concluded that "pending

the widespread adoption of really revolutionary

technical aids, it will be necessary to make comprehensive arrangements for interlibrary cooperation." 31 Particular problems discussed include

inadequate coverage with respect to library holdings and the problem of reproducing European

literature not available during the war, the question of translation and republication of Russian

language materials, the need for cumulative in- dexes to periodicals in various fields, and the like. While the Committee did not offer specific recommendations, it wished "to call attention to the existence of problems which, because of their magnitude and the large measure of centralization

necessary for solution, appear to be proper subjects of federal concern." 32

29 Ibid, p. 29.

80 Ibid, pp. 110-111. "Bush, 1945 [91], p. 112. « Ibid, p. 115.

10
The Stewart Committee report, however, noting

>'

I the developments already in progress in OSRD 'e

| toward the establishment of a publication board,

>

i specifically recommended "the prompt establishment and adequate staffing within the National

d ! Academy of Sciences of the proposed board to con-

; trol the release and promote publication of certain

scientific information. This is essential." 33 Then, in June of 1945, an Executive Order

J (9568) turned over to the Secretary of Commerce

"operational responsibilities with respect to the

I declassification and distribution of government

d research reports kept under wraps during the war

6 years." 34 This Executive Order was followed by

• a second (9604) concerning the reporting of the

' i scientific and technical accomplishments of Axis

e Nations. Out of these orders came the Office of

? Technical Services (OTS), recently renamed the

' Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information. From the original order creating

c a "Publication Board," derives the so-called "PB"

number still in use today. The Clearinghouse was

i endorsed by the Federal Council for Science and

• Technology and is building on existing activities

1 of OTS.

Shaw reports on some of the early objectives as

f follows : "The work of the board is so designed as

to make maximum use of all cooperating bodies

s and it welcomes offers of cooperation from any

f group which can carry responsibilities for abstractf ing and disseminating knowledge on a nonprofit

f basis. . . . The concept of publication under which

!i the board operates is the broad concept of 'an8 nouncing or making known' rather than the nar- rower concept of printing and distribution of multiple copies. . . . The publication itself will . . .

i be sent to the cooperating library covering its subb ject-matter field. Initially the cooperating li- braries are Library of Congress, Army Medical

Library, and the Department of Agriculture

3 Library . . . these libraries will file the publication

' by the number assigned to them by the publica-

' | tion board." 35 In September 1950, the 81st Congress passed

' Public Law 776, Section 2 of which is concerned

with the operation of the OTS as follows: ". . .

j

\ the purpose of this Act is to make the results of

technological research and development more

i readily available to industry and business, and to the general public, by clarifying and defining the

functions and responsibilities of the Department

of Commerce as a central clearinghouse for technical information which is useful to American in- dustry and business . . . "The Secretary of Commerce ... is hereby di- rected:

"(a) To search for, collect, classify, coordinate,

integrate, record, and catalog such information

83 Ibid, p. 184.

84 Green, 1963 [225], p. 1.

85 Shaw [52], p. 106-107.

from whatever sources, foreign and domestic, that

may be available.

"(b) To make such information available . . . through the preparation of abstracts, digests,

translations, bibliographies, indexes, and microfilm and other reproductions . . ." 36 For the next several years OTS collected and

processed unclassified reports supplied by cooperating government agencies. Then, in 1957, after

Sputnik, a greater interest in Soviet scientific and technical achievements led to the establishment of a clearinghouse for translations. OTS

has also expanded its coverage of reports from

non-Government sources, particularly those result- ing from research "indirectly supported by the

Government . . . (such as) grants or percentage

allowances (which enable) improvements or developments of research facilities . . ." 37 From its initial establishment, OTS has provided many examples of cooperation in the processing of scientific and technical information

intra-Governmental, between Government and in- dustry, with professional society or commercial

publishers. A specific example is the program

whereby American scientists and technologists

visited Europe to uncover for themselves information about wartime developments there. "Victory

opened the doors and the files of German factories

and laboratories to American investigators. . . . The cost is trivial, no more than the salaries and

expenses of investigators—they travel at no cost to the Government. . . . We are dependent on the

military for billets, food, transportation, and a hundred other things, all of which they have effi- ciently provided. . . . The Office of Technical

Services opens the way. . . . We impose but one major condition on investigators: they must re- port their findings fully, in writing, in the form

of technical reports. All reports are made publicly available for the benefit of all industry." 38 Another example: "To get important documents into circulation more effectively, OTS per- suaded a number of commercial publishers to issue some of them. Once every two or three weeks, a

selective 'Bulletin of OTS Eeports Suitable for

Commercial Publication' goes to 75 publishers, in- viting them to order copies of items considered

publishable." 39 Something of the scope of the "technological

reparations" program of OTS may be appreciated

in terms of 1947 comments: "To date over four

million pages covering all fields of sciences and

technology have been put on microfilm." 40 Turning back to the immediate post-war period,

the Atomic Energy Commission was directed by

the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (and that of 1954)

to conduct the following program: "(1) records

3»U.S. Senate, 1961 [591], p. 13. "Hamrick, 1963 [237 J, p. 219.

*> Green, 1947 [224], p. 24.

3» "Distribution", 1947 [175], p. 10.

io "Technological Reparations", 1947 [567], p. 8.

11
and reproduces as rapidly as possible the scientific and technological data developed in its research

and technological programs ; (2) maintains acquisition and exchange programs with nuclear re- search centers throughout the world ; (3) compiles

the world's most comprehensive scientific information in the field of nuclear science ; (4) bibliographically organizes, packages, and distributes for the use of all peoples this body of knowledge of the

atom and its application to peaceful purposes." 41 The Department of Defense was also, of course, through the predecessor separate Departments,

active in this period. The Central Air Documents

Office, with a large punched card processing instal- lation, had been established at Dayton, the Navy

Research Section had been established in the Division of Science and Technology of the Library of

Congress, and a variety of information activities

in specialized subject fields were in operation.

Then, "in 1948, the Research and Development

Board chartered a Committee on Technical Information. The principal act of this committee was

to establish the Armed Services Technical Information Agency ( ASTIA) in 1951 by consolidating

the activities of the Navy at the Library of Congress, known as the Navy Research Section, and

a similar Air Force operation at Dayton, Ohio,

known as the Central Air Documents Office

(CADO)." 42 The interests of the Congress in documentation

and library matters, as previously noted, reach

back to the beginning of the 19th century and the

founding of the Library of Congress. Again,

". . . previous to the passage of the act of Congress establishing the Smithsonian Institution,

various propositions were from time to time made

to Congress, for the appropriation of the fund

bequeathed to the United States . . . No one of

the many plans suggested met the approval of Congress, until Mr. Choate proposed, and in one of

his most brilliant and effective speeches advocated,

the establishment of a great central library of

reference and research. His bill met with general approval and passed the Senate, but was lost among other unfinished business in the lower

House." 43 In 1906, the Keep Commission distributed a

questionnaire on the organization and use of government libraries, to which the Army Medical

Library responded to some of the specific inquiries as follows : "On why printed cards were not used

'About 20 languages are represented in the indexing work of this library to several of the less known of which translations are appended. The

space required can suit each case on a written

card' . . . On whether the ALA list of subject

headings was followed : 'For a highly specialized

collection the subject headings of the A.L.A.,

"U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 3-6.

42 U.S. House 1959 [586], p. 43, statement of B. G. Huff.

43 "Proceedings of the Librarians' Convention . . . 1853," 1915

[466], p. 19.

though excellent for a general library, would be

inadequate.'

44 The interest of the Senate Committee on Government Operations in the development of a co- ordinated program for dissemination of scientific information began when the committee was first established in the 80th Congress. "Immediately

after its creation . . . the committee . . . held

hearings on a bill (S 493) ... to provide for the,

coordination of agencies disseminating technological and scientific information and for the more

efficient administration of an information ex- change program." 45 But instead of S. 493, a bill was passed which created the National Science

Foundation (NSF) . This 1950 act (PL. 81-507),

reflected recognition by the Congress "of a new

and enchanced role of science and technology in

public affairs—recognition by an expressed intent:

to promote the progress of science ; to advance the

national health, prosperity, and welfare ; to secure the national defense." 46 Paragraph 5 of the act m

especially significant : "To foster the interchange

of scientific information among scientists in the; United States and foreign countries . . . ." 47 In 1958, the National Defense Education Act:

provided for the establishment of the Science In- formation Service in the NSF, as follows: "The!

National Science Foundation, through . . . (the;

Science Information Service) . . . shall (1) provide, or arrange for the provision of, indexing, abstracting, translating, and other services leading to a more effective dissemination of scientific in-j

formation; and (2) undertake programs to develop new or improved methods, including mechanized systems, for making scientific information

available." 48 On December 30, 1958, the Science Information

Council advisory to the Office of Science Information Service (OSIS) was established. The

Council included the Librarian of Congress, the

Director of the National Library of Medicine, the

Director of the National Agricultural Library, the

head of OSIS, and 15 members from the fields of

science, librarianship, and documentation, andi

from the lay public. NSF also established the Federal Advisory Committee on Scientific Informa-i

tion, which held its first meeting in January 1959,

and considered the problem of dissemination of

unpublished research reports and the need for ex- panded indexing services for foreign technical

literature.

Executive Order No. 10807 of March 13, 1959

established the Federal Council for Science and I Technology "to promote closer cooperation among

Federal agencies in planning their research and

development programs, and to recommend ways in

which the Federal Government can assist in ad44 Schullian and Rogers, 1958 [567], p. 29.

45 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 1.

40 U.S. Senate, 1961 [591], p. 10.

47 Par. 5, The National Science Foundation Act of 1950 (P.L. 81-507).

48 Title IX, National Defense Education Act of 1958 (P.L. 85-864).

12
vancing and strengthening the Nation's scientific effort as a whole".49 The Order called specifically for the National Science Foundation to provide leadership in the effective coordination of the

scientific information activities of the Federal

Government and to improve the availability and

dissemination of scientific information.

In carrying out the various tasks and responsibilities assigned to it, the NSF "is generally proceeding on the assumption that more can be gained

by close cooperation with, and in support of, exist- ing scientific information services in the United

States, both public and private, where they are functioning effectively, than by direct Federal operation of such services. The scientific information services rendered by many of the scientific socities and professional institutions to the scientific community are world famous for their quality.

We believe it is essential that the Federal Government continue to cooperate with, and assist, such

private groups in the achievement of long-range

solutions to scientific information problems." 50 In summarizing the activities of OSIS in its

first several years of operation, Adkinson reports

that a six-point program has been developed by

the National Science Foundation for improving

the dissemination of scientific information, particularly among U.S. scientists and engineers

"First, improvement in policy making, program

planning, and coordination in scientific information activities is being fostered both within and between Government agencies.

"Second, a sizable research and study program

is being supported looking toward the development of new and better methods of processing,

disseminating, storage, and retrieving scientific information . . . "Third, scientific societies are being encouraged

and supported by the Federal Government in as- suming greater responsibility for the effective dis- semination of scientific information within their

own disciplines . . . "Fourth, closer cooperation and coordination is being fostered among Government agencies having like or similar scientific information programs . . . "Fifth, better coordination is being fostered in

American participation in international organizations that are oriented to documentation activities . . . "Sixth, action is being undertaken to stimulate

effective educational and training programs in

scientific documentation." 51 As a result of these and other programs, it has

been claimed that "O.S.I.S has probably served as the most influential single force for progress in

scientific and technical information throughout the

world." 52

49 U.S. Senate, 1961 [591]i, p. 15.

50 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592],, p. 25, comments by A. T. Waterman.

61 1962 [5], p. 50.

52 Cahn, 1962 [94], p. 28.

Other examples of the U.S. Government activities during the first 15 years succeeding the close

of World War II include the "financial sponsorship by agencies of the publication of new research

journals by appropriate learned societies," such

as the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in

the field of fluid mechanics and the AEC in the

field of reactor technology,53 the DOD Directive

of March 4, 1952 establishing the Armed Forces

Medical Library as a national library for medicine

and related sciences, and the subsequent transfer- ence of the latter to the Department of Health,

Education, and Welfare with the name change appropriate to its mission.

To cope with its information handling problems,

the Central Intelligence Agency has since the late 1940's developed an information processing center which "comprehensively indexes and stores that

information which is collected and, as a service of

common concern, renders daily support to analysts

at work in all parts of the U.S. Government's intel- ligence community." 54 In 1954, in its consideration of a Department of

Commerce budget request, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee had directed that the Department ". . . make an aggressive, thorough investigation as to the possibility of mechanizing the

searching operations . . . [of the U.S. Patent

Office] ." 55 This directive resulted in the conven- ing of a committee headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush

which recommended in part that a research unit

be established in the Patent Office and that it undertake a joint program with the National Bureau of Standards to develop techniques specifically for patent searching operations (1954 [596] )

Turning now to cooperative efforts among the

various Government agencies, we note first that

during the period 1946-1948 the Army Medical

Library entered into a cooperative cataloging

agreement with the Library of Congress whereby

"the cards for all medical titles cataloged by the

two libraries were published in a medical card

series." 56 Far more extensive, however, were the

pre-VE Day concerns of the defense-intelligence

communities with problems of acquisition of additional and declassification of previously acquired

material relating to foreign scientific and technological information. "The burden of federal

procurement throughout the war . . . was placed

upon two principal sources of supply—the foreign

service and an interdepartmental committee

created for the express purpose of acquiring foreign publications." 57 Further, "during the past few years the government has itself, through the Office of Strategic

Services, the Interdepartmental Committee for the

Acquisition of Foreign Publications, the Department of State, and the Library of Congress, been

^Herner and Herner, 1959 [254], p. 195.

64 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 63.

65 Ibid. p. 75. ^MacDonald, 1953 [364]-, p. 67. "Humphrey, 1946 [276], p. 99.

13
the principal promoter of the acquisition of European (as well as other) book materials, and has

made, through the Alien Property Custodian's re- publication program, many important foreign

publications available in photofacsimile to libraries generally ....

"At the June [1945] meeting of the Association

of Research Libraries, the question was raised

whether libraries generally might not share the use of the channels enjoyed by the Library of Congress. On August 4, 1945, Mr. MacLeish wrote to Dr. Evans stating that : 'The Department of State

agrees with the Library of Congress's view that

the national interest is directly affected by the

holdings of the many private research libraries. It would, therefore, interpose no objection in principle to the employment of federal government facilities to assist in maintaining their specialized

collections where normal channels of acquisition are inoperative. It is believed, however, that cer- tain basic understandings should be made clear at the outset. The department would wish to be

assured that the private libraries had agreed upon

and carefully planned a program of cooperative

buying . . . .'

58 Shortly after the war, then, the Department of

State requested the Librarian of Congress to ex- plore new means for coordination of the foreign

acquisitions activities. As a result, it was recommended to the Secretary

of State that consideration be given to "the establishment of a permanent Interdepartmental Committee on the Acquisition of Library Materials

within the framework of the interagency intelli- gence group which the President had requested

him to form." 59 In late 1946, the area of cooperative acquisition was the topic of a conference of college librarians.

Clapp, in his introduction, said : "As a sort of pre- cursor of a general plan, there has been

developed a special project which has had as its object the procurement and distribution of recent European library materials," 60 and Peiss reported on the Library of Congress Mission, stating that

"the number of volumes shipped from Germany

and Austria . . . now exceeds one million." 61 Boyd, who was a co-father of what would

emerge as the Farmington Plan, remarked at the same conference that "some of us have been

privileged to inspect the vast mechanism of the

cooperative acquisitions project. More than six

thousand wooden packing cases full of books,

gathered from many repositories in Europe, trans- ported to America, opened, divided into categories,

correlated with the system of priorities established

by the committee and dispatched to 115 participating libraries, makes an impressing spectacle." 62 The Downs committee, which established these

68 Clapp, 1946 [115], p. 130-131.

69 Humphrey, 1946 [276], p. 103.

00 Clapp, 1947 [113], p. 100.

61 Pelss, 1947 [452], p. 116. ""Boyd, 1947 [75], p. 109.

priorities among participating libraries for the

distribution of materials found by the Cooperative

Acquisitions Project, was composed of representatives of ALA, the Association of Research

Libraries, the American Council of Learned

Societies, the Joint Committee on Importations,

the National Research Council, the Social Science

Research Council, and the American Council on

Education.

The Interdepartmental Committee itself was of

interest in several ways. First, it provided an

instructive example with respect to the roles of

members of such interagency groups : "For members of the committee to conceive of themselves, or for their agencies to conceive of them,

solely as representatives of the interests of the

governmental bodies to which they are attached,

would render most difficult the primary task of

attaining broad consideration of federal acquisition policy. The situation demands, instead, the

continuous deliberation of individuals whose re- sponsibility and chief interest lies in substantive

fields of knowledge not necessarily encompassed

by the rigid framework of governmental administrative structures." 03 Second, the Committee provided a stimulus to other more or less formal mechanisms for interchange of information and for cooperation among

Government agencies. Taube, for example, from

1948 onward promoted collaboration between The

Science and Technology Division, LC, and the

information divisions of other agencies. Taube

(1952 [560]) also has described arrangements

made by AEC to receive photostats of all articles on selected subjects abstracted by either the U.S.

Department of Agriculture Library or the Army

Medical Library.

Such efforts bore fruit in these and other government agencies, in the Group for the Standardization of Information Services (GSIS) which was organized in the early 1950's. The agencies

represented in the Group included the Technical

Information Service of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) ; the Division of Research In- formation of the National Advisory Committee

for Aeronautics (NACA), now a part of the National Aeronautical and Space Agency (NASA)

the Central Air Documents Office (CADO) of the

Air Materiel Command; and the Navy Research

Section of the Library of Congress (LC) the lat- ter two being eventually merged as ASTIA.

Working-level personnel of the agencies repre- sented in the Group agreed upon a common format

for catalog cards in the hope that they might be

interchangeable among and directly usable by the

agencies in their respective card catalogs. The

card, which had been devised at LC by Taube, was

a marginal-type 3x5 card having a vertical line

about two inches from the right edge ; the citation

and an abstract appeared in the body of the card,

and subject headings and other filing points in the

"'Humphrey. 1946 [276], p. 103. 14
Tight-hand, margin. The cards could also be employed in the preparation of abstract bulletins,

bibliographies, and cumulated indexes ; pasted into

sheets, with the margins covered, they formed twocolumn pages of entries, each of which consisted of

.a citation and an abstract. This technique was in

fact used in the preparation of Technical Information Pilot (TIP), of the Navy Research Section. "The TIP . . . utilizes the left half of the

GSIS catalog card for each entry and makes additional typing for the journal unnecessary except

for the typing of source and subject indexes for

each issue." ei Other GSIS activities, for example, with respect

to possibilities for standard practice in the citing

of corporate authors and for the development of a common set of subject headings, were significantly

less successful.65 The interesting point in these

attempts at cooperative processing was that the

working-level personnel got together, established

common aims and at least some common goals and

tried to operate in a cooperative and coordinated manner. It is also interesting to note that several

non-Governmental agencies, the editorial office of

Meteorological and Geoastrophysical Abstracts

and a number of Department of Defense contractors, adopted the right-hand margin card.

Another early example of cooperative Governmental agency cooperation to improve the dissemination of information about research accomplishments and research progress was the short-lived

periodical, Federal Science Progress. The first issue, for February, 1947, stated in a foreword

that : "This is a magazine for the businessman. It

is published to bring him, each month, a report on

the scientific and technical activities of his Government . . . Government research files are bulging with reports. They contain millions of pages

of scientific and technical information seized in

enemy countries, as well as information given us by friendly foreign governments. Federal Science

Progress proposes to skim the cream from this mass of material and to report to the businessman

what is available, and where." 66 After a relatively small number of issues, publication of Federal Science Progress was discontinued. As the endpiece of its last issue, there is a

facsimile of a Department of Commerce press

release dated March 7, 1947, stating in part:

" 'Federal Science Progress' was started with the

February issue as a medium to review and to call attention to the nonsecret scientific reports available in the Government of work being carried on

with federal funds . . . The magazine . . . was

regarded after three month's experience as not

being adapted to the purely service functions of

the Department . . . Criticism developed from

publishers with general circulation in the scientific

field on the ground that the magazine represented

potential competition, and overlapped the field of

private publications. Although early Department

surveys had indicated that direct competition

would not develop, the views of publisher groups were taken into consideration in making the

decision." 67 In the first issue of this ill-fated periodical, the

ill-fated Chemical-Biological Coordination Center

received early appreciation : "Now there is a central clearinghouse to record all new substances, as well as those already discovered, to keep a systematic file on their most important properties, and

to point the way to further research on their

potent alities. This tremendous job has been

undertaken by the Chemical-Biological Coordinating Center, recently set up by the National

Research Council . . . ." 68 During the war years, OSRD had sponsored

the testing of chemical compounds for biological

activity, especially for effectiveness against in- sects and rodents. After the war, its Insect Control Committee was transferred to the National

Research Council, where with financial support

from the Army, the Navy and the American Cancer Society it emerged in 1946 as the ChemicalBiological Coordination Center. The initial objectives were: "to make information accessible to

scientists and to facilitate the study of relationships between chemical structure and biological

activity ... to sponsor a screening program to

facilitate testing of chemicals on a variety of

plants and animals ... to prepare and publish

reviews, and to sponsor symposia." 69 The essential first steps were to develop codes for both the

chemical and the biological information.

In a study made for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Dougherty has explored the "rise

and fall" of this organization. The experiment was an interesting one, especially in the development of the codes. However, many of the reasons

for failure are instructive in terms of the general

problems of improving utilization of scientific and

technical information through cooperation, convertibility, and compatibility.

First, the questions of funding. By the end of

CBCC's first five years, budget requirements were

in excess of the planned financial support. "In

the beginning of the Center apparently the sponsors believed in its value; now, however, it has

become more expensive than had originally been

estimated, therefore, the NRC wants to reappraise

its value and cost. The Research Council is interested in furnishing a home for the CBCC as an

interesting and perhaps very important experiment but only as long as there is adequate support

and interest." 70 There was, second, the problem of alternate or supplemental sources for stable financing. At a

« Jackson, 1952 [291], p. 96. «Taube, 1952 [560], p. 22-23.

<* Federal Science Progress 1, No. 1, 3 (1947).

"Federal Science Progress 1, No. 5 (1947).

08 "Chemical Center," 1947 [110], p. 15.

69 Dougherty, 1963 [177], p. 4-5.

70 Minutes, 1952 meeting of representatives of sponsoring agencies, quoted, Dougherty, 1963 [177]) p. 9.

15
1952 meeting, "a number of those present suggested the possibility of approaching industry for

support . . . Others . . . pointed out that companies would not want to cooperate until they

found something they could utilize, or, that industry would not be willing to support the Center

until provisions had been made to insure individual companies that their patent rights would

be protected." 71 A third problem was that of relative breadth

and depth of coverage, especially as CBCC moved

more in the direction of emphasizing service functions. In 1955 a special committee considered,

among other problems, the scope of the activities. "The term 'scope' was used to denote two concepts.

First, that the amount of literature coverage be

increased, that is, the number of journals coded in

the various disciplines be increased, and second,

that the size of the organization, itself, be ex- panded in order to broaden the scope of services

offered. There were several people who advocated expansion. On the other hand, there were

others who recommended that instead of attempting to cover so many disciplines that the center should concentrate its efforts and restrict coverage

to only a feAv disciplines in order to achieve depth.

Finally there were a few who believed that the

Center needed both breadth and depth of cover- age in order to achieve its objective . . . ." 72 Finally, in 1957, NAS/NEC terminated the

CBCC operations. Dougherty reports representative reactions as follows: "Sentiment ran the

gamut from thorough disgust with the Academy's

decision to complete approval. . . . The Center

received a number of letters from scientists and

organizations that had received information from

the Center . . . Although the letters, about thirty

in number, could not be termed a representative

sample, they indicated that some scientists had

benefited from the Center's services and regretted

its passing." 73 Further "some scientists believed that ... if activities were terminated somebody else would

have to restart a similar operation," "the center was ahead of its time," "the center had demonstrated that given adequate financial support and

scientifically qualified personnel large masses of

published and unpublished data could be controlled by machine methods," "the nature of the

objectives had forced the staff to spread itself so thinly in its efforts that the ultimate result was

over-all dilution of programs." 74 The most significant achievement was generally felt to be the

development of the NEC Chemistry and Biology

Codes.

"An important early contribution to information retrieval was made by the Chemical-Biological Coordination Center . . . There were

several outgrowths as a result of the early pioneer11 Dougherty, 1963 [177], p. 9. "Ibid, pp. 10-11.

73 Ibid, pp. 13-14.

74 Ibid, pp. 15-16.

16

ing work of the CBCC . . . Among them was the

work of Maloney, at Fort Detrick, who developed

a medical and chemical system patterned after the

CBCC work. Welt developed one of the CBCCt

ramifications which has subsequently become the

g Cardiovascular Literature Project. A somewhat f; related project dealing with carcinogenic effects: of chemical compounds is being carried out at The

Cancer Chemotherapy National Service Center .. . ." 75 This example has been reported at some length

because the CBCC involved a cooperative venture

in information services in terms of both Govern- j mental and non-Governmental sponsorship, it en- j listed the collaboration of outside scientists in i various subcommittees which dealt with the development of the codes, it attempted to develop an

integrated system for storage, search, and retrieval i using machine techniques. Moreover, it is possible that instructive lessons may be learned from

the reasons for failure.

Dougherty summarizes the four points con

siderecl to be the major reasons as follows: "The

first, as stated by the NRC-NAS, was an inability to attract adequate and stable financial support... The second, according to a number of scientists, ; was the failure to limit its objectives and scope of , operation . . . The third point was that the Center had not been able to develop an integrated

storage and retrieval system. While they had;

demonstrated an ability to code and store data, the

retrieval portion of the system had been neglected.

As a consequence the Center had not been able to show a capacity to retrieve stored data. Finally, one scientist stated that the Center had not been

able to demonstrate the uniqueness of its services. In his opinion, the only unique features produced were the two codes and the design of a variety of

code sheets." 76

2.3. Role of National Organizations

In addition to early Government activities lead-

ing to cooperation and coordination of scientific information activities, other steps have been taken

by organizations interested in such developments.

Associations of librarians; professional societies

in fields related to library science and in fields re- lated to science, technology, law and communications; industrial organizations, and formal and

informal groupings of many of these bodies

have individually and in mutual cooperation con- tributed to the development of documentation

practices.

For example, "the Joint Libraries Committee on Fair Use in Photocopying . . . which represents

the American Library Association, the Association

of Research Libraries, and the Special Libraries

Association, was established in 1957 to work on

copyright problems which arise when libraries

'5 Marden & Roller, 1961 [370], p. 11.

76 Dougherty, 1963 [1771, P- 17.

i
photocopy materials in their collections for their

users. . . ." 77 Among the librarians particularly active in

documentation matters have been the members of

the Special Libraries Association (SLA) , "formed

in 1909 by librarians of business, professional,

governmental, and industrial organizations to promote the collection, organization and dissemination of information in specialized fields and to improve the usefulness of special libraries and

information services." 78 One instance of SLA's

interest in cooperation in documentation was the

session held in conjunction with the annual con- vention of 1959, which had the theme "International Cooperation in Documentation." Papers were presented on documentation services in Great

Britain, the Netherlands, West Germany, South

Africa, Japan, Canada, and Latin America, as well as on two documentation agencies in the

United States. Other instances of cooperative activities on the

part of SLA are the maintenance of a collection

of specialized classification schedules, contributed

from other groups in the United States and abroad

and the establishment, in 1953, of a national "pool"

of translations at the John Crerar Library which,

in 1959, entered into a cooperative program with

OTS.79 The American Documentation Institute (ADI)

was formed in 1937 as a society of organizations

rather than of individuals. Its original major in- terests were "in techniques for more effective use of

microfilm and questions related to copyright . . . based on the goal which ADI had set for it- self ... to make scholarly material readily available to researchers . . . . 80 As steps to implement

the goal, a network of microfilm laboratories, a coordinated interlibrary loan system, and an auxiliary publication program were envisioned. The

latter program, which began in the U.S. Department of Agriculture Library in 1934,81 still operates through the Photoduplication Service of the

Library of Congress.

_ In 1952, ADI changed from an institute of societies to an organization composed mainly of in- dividual members, although institutional membership is still also allowed. The interests of the so- ciety and the activities to which it has turned its attention have broadened considerably. By 1957,

ADI had working committees on Bibliography, on Research and Development, on Education of

Documentalists, and on Cataloging and Classifi- cation.

Until 1959, ADI also served as the U.S. representative to the International Federation for Documentation (FID). "When that international

organization was incorporated under Belgian law,

in August 1959, and increased the financial obli-

TM Scientific Information Notes, Vol. 3, No. 4, p. 20 (1961).

78 Towner, 1953 [571], title page. "Gingold, 1961 [217], p. 15; U.S. House, 1959 [586], p. 19.

8l>Adkinson. 1964 [4], p. 388.

81 Mohrhardt, 1959 [391 ]i, p. 30.

gations of national and international members,

ADI requested the National Academy of SciencesNational Research Council to undertake the re- sponsibility. The Office of Documentation, NAS/

NBC, was assigned the task of establishing the

U.S. National Committee for FID, and "a tiny

membership organization . . . was thus relieved

of the burden of this representation." 82 An example of the continuing drive of ADI to explore and to apply new techniques for coping

with documentation problems was shown in the

preparation for its 1963 annual meeting. Each

registrant for the meeting was given two volumes

of preprints of "short papers" (not exceeding two

printed pages) , the text of which had been printed

from type set automatically with the aid of elec- tronic information processing equipment, in an

interval of three weeks or less before the meeting.

(Luhn, 1963 (354) : Figure 1 is a facsimile of the

frontispiece of a special edition of Volume I)

PIRST BOOK 6? TECHNICAL ARTICLES TYPE-SST BY COMPUTER

Thli is No. 68. of 1 00 copios of a special edition of (hit book, prepared ai a memento

and as a token of recognition to those who were involved in its creation and who are

here identified by their signatures:

Counlereigned Chicago, III. October 6, 1963

PRESIDENT, AMERICAN DOCOTaeAiTATION INSTITUTE

The bibliographic information for the approximately 600 papers was keypunched and processed on an IBM-1401 computer to produce (1) the table

of contents, (2) a permuted title or key word-incontext (KWIC) index, (3) an author index to the short papers, (4) a citation index to the bibliographic references cited in the papers, (5) a KWIC index to the titles of these references, (6) a "bibliography" or listing by the codes assigned

62 Council on Library Resources, 1960 [142], p. 6.

17
to the citations, and (7) an author index to the ci- tations. The machine-readable form of the text

is available for research purposes.

In appointing the U.S. National Committee for

FID, the Office of Documentation, NAS/NRC,

provides representation not only for documentation and scientific information specialists, but also

for scientific societies. Many of these societies

have their own groups and programs in the scientific information field. The Division of Chemical Literature of the

American Chemical Society (ACS) dates at least informally from the society's meeting in the

Spring of 1943. At that meeting a paper by Egloff, Alexander and Van Arsdell, "Problems of the

Scientific Literature Survey" (1949 [184]), was

presented before the Division of Chemical Education. The presentation inspired the organization

of symposia on technical library techniques, the

first of which was held at the ACS Fall meeting

in 1943.

This activity in turn led to the formation of the

Chemical Literature Group of the Division of

Chemical Education. The Group sponsored ses- sions at subsequent national meetings, dealing with

the subjects of technical library operation, chemical nomenclature, translation of foreign publications, and the like. In September 1948, the ACS

Council approved the petition of the Group to be

given the status of a division, and the Division of

Chemical Literature came into existence. Its first

official program was presented at the Society's

Spring 1949 meeting. The Division continues to devote itself to documentation problems in the

field of chemistry, sponsors technical sessions,

maintains operating committees for A^arious special areas and is responsible for technical content

of the ACS publication Journal of Chemical Documentation.

In addition to its sponsorship of the Gordon

Research Conferences, the American Association

for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has es- tablished the Section on Information and Communication (Section T), which developed from a

series of information conferences which had been

held during the Association's annual meetings beginning in 1951. The conferences were variously

called Operation Knowledge (1951), Conference on Scientific Editorial Problems (1952-56), and

Conference on Scientific Communication (1957-

1961). The Section was organized formally in

1962. It has provided a forum where interested

societies and individuals may "discuss documentation problems and work toward their solution." 83 The Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR) of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) was organized in 1962 to satisfy certain specialized needs of the professional

community served by ACM. These include, (1)

advancement of the application of machines to the

storage, retrieval, and dissemination of informa83 Parkins, 1962 [447], p. 536.

tion; (2) advancement of information retrieval,

theory, programming, file preparation, searching

strategy, output schemes, information retrieval

system evaluation, and development of equipment

best suited for these tasks; and (3) the exchange

of information on new developments in these 1 areas. Two groups actively engaged in cooperative and

coordinating studies of documentation problems

are the National Federation of Science Abstract- >j ing and Indexing Services (NFSAIS), and the ! Classification Research Study Group (CRSG).

The NFSAIS was established in 1958, when the

J National Science Foundation "provided funds and ' I staff work for a conference of major U.S. scienj tific abstracting and indexing services. The maj or accomplishment of the conference was the formation of the National Federation of Science Ab-i

stracting and Indexing Services which strives tw

coordinate and improve the work of the various^

services and to encourage the development of abstracting and indexing services for those specialized subject fields not at present covered by such

services." 84 The Federation now numbers 14 major abstract-: ing and indexing service organizations. Its ac- I tivities include the preparation of a union list of! periodicals covered by the cooperating services,

analysis of the scientific periodicals produced

around the world, and the like. Its working

groups are the Index Editorial, Management Services, Manufacture and Production, Material Procurement, and Research Groups.

The Classification Research Study Group is an

organization of persons interested in the development of classification schemes and often actively ! engaged in research or studies of classification sys- tems and applications. The group usually meets,

in conjunction with meetings of related societies,

and conducts cooperative projects dealing with the

theory and structure of classification schemes. It 1 collaborates also in the maintenance of the SLA

Special Classifications Center.

In addition to these specialized groups, the folf lowing organizations are actively interested in cer- tain aspects of cooperative documentation : the S American Institute of Physics, with its Documentation Research Project; the American Chem- ! ical Society which in addition to the Division of j Chemical Literature has an active research program on abstracting and indexing and the total

publication process and which "since its inception

in 1876 . . . has been deeply concerned with the!

need to handle effectively the mass of chemical

knowledge generated by American scientists," 83 and the American Institute of Biological Sciences,

j The Biological Sciences Communication Project,

for example, studies the flow of information from,

producer to user, the extent of use of the foreign

literature, citation practices, and the like. One of

M U.S. House, 1959 [591], p. 67, statement by A. T. Waterman.

65 U.S. Senate, 1962 [594], p. 24, statement of A. H. Emery.

18
val i its most important tasks is the "identification, ex- amination, and classification of all the world's

vaj journals in the field of biomedicine." 86

cut , _ Still other organizations interested in cooperaig{ tive efforts in documentation include the National

iest i Microfilm Association, concerned with all aspects

of microfilm reprography ; the Association of Reinii search Libraries, whose Automation Committee

us proposes to take a major role in developing a nacl tional system of bibliographic automation ; the

American Society for Metals with its Documenta-

}), tion Committee and its collaboration with Western

Ik Reserve; the Engineers Joint Council and its Ini formation System Committee, and the American

a Library Association which in 1922 established a

jot Committee on Bibliography that would particiij. pate "in the growing movement to get together all

.1 going enterprises in biblography for practical cofo operation," 87 and which has sponsored since 1959

id a_ Library Technology Project "designed to proI). vide librarians with authoritative information and

j. guidance of all phases of equipment, supplies, mail chines, and systems used in library operations." 88 An example of early interindustry cooperative

t, concern in the technical documentation area is the

0 American Petroleum Institute : ". . . Inthel940's

if the considerable amount of duplicate work going

s on in processing a central core of published petrod leum information, and in developing the methods

j needed for this processing, caused much concern.

:. It seemed logical that much of this work could be

y done more economically, and on an even larger

scale, by a central operation. Each company

n would still have to cover a residue of documents

1 of particular interest to itself. Interest was

y aroused among petroleum research managements,

. and a proposal to begin centralized abstracting

^ was eventually put before the American Petro-

^ leum Institute . . . ."

i " [In 1954] the API Central Abstracting Service

t

i began its operations by publishing a weekly abij stract bulletin covering the literature reported in

I the 100 sources deemed basic to petroleum refin-

. ing. Classified sets of abstract cards were soon made available, following development of an aci ceptable classification system." 89

_ The interests of some of the nonprofit organizations and private foundations in the United States

1

j should also be noted. In his 1945 report to the

I President, Bush pointed out that "both the Library

i of Congress and the Army Medical Library oc- cupy leading positions in their fields. Yet those

! two Government institutions still have to look to private sources for much of their support, especially for projects involving experimentation with new methods. Two foundations alone have contributed over half a million dollars to the Library

of Congress in the past few years." 90

First and foremost among such organizations,

partly because of its quasi-Governmental yet in- dependent character, partly because of its sponsorship of work involved in the preparation of this

report, and partly because of its explicit assumption of responsibilities for international collaboration in the field, is the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. NAS/NRC

has been instrumental in such other activities as the planning and support of the International Conference on Scientific Information, the establishment of the Office of Critical Tables, and provision

of financial support and/or "homes" for specialized information centers such as CBCC and the

Prevention of Deterioration Center which "is a

nonprofit, scientific organization maintained

jointly by the three United States armed services,

by means of an Office of Naval Research contract,

under the operating supervision of the National

Academy of Science-National Research Council." 91 Another example of NAS/NRC service in U.S.

representation to international groups was the

U.S. National Committee for the International

Geophysical Year. We might note in passing

that IGY had been preceded by an International

Polar Year "in which several countries interested

in the compilation of scientific data of the Arctic

regions, pooled information and techniques. This

cooperation gave added value to the methods of the

observation and presentation of the data col- lected." 92 IGY activities are also to be noted in terms of

uses of advanced documentation techniques. Thus,

computer programs were prepared to compile a "Tabledex" index for the IGY bibliography compiled by the Library of Congress (Zusman et al., 1962 [660]) and the World Meteorological Organization published the meteorological data obtained in the form of micro-cards (Gunther, 1962

[232]).

In addition to its contributions over the years

to the Library of Congress, Army Medical Library, and others, the Rockefeller Foundation's

interests are exemplified by its initial financial support for the American Book Center, (now the U.S.

Book Exchange) and the establishment of the Scientific Information Service of the Inter-American

Institute of Agricultural Services for the purposes

of promoting "the betterment of scientific communication facilities among technicians working

in research, education and agricultural extension." 93 A special example of an independent privately

supported organization devoted to the advancement of libraries and documentation is the Council on Library Resources established by the Ford

Foundation and incorporated in 1956 in the District of Columbia. The Council has as its prin01 Wessel and Bejuk :, 1959 [642], p. 731.

02 Bush, 1945 [91], p. 107. "Murra, 1962 [402], p. 173.

88 Shilling, 1963 [531]/, p. 206.

87 Richardson, 1928 [480], p. 43.

88 Scientific Information Notes 2, No. 2, 3 (1960).

89 Weil et al., 1961 [635], p. 57.

90 Bush, 1945 [91], p. 113.

19
cipal objectives: to aid in the solution of library

problems; to conduct research and develop and

demonstrate new techniques and methods and to disseminate the results. It conducts its work

chiefly through grants or contracts to other or- ganizations or to individuals.

Over the years, then, there have been many in- stances of cooperative interplay and interaction

with respect to scientific documentation among

professional societies, industrial and commercial

interests, nonprofit institutions, and other national

organizations. Two further examples illustrate

cooperative relationships in which Government

agencies have also participated.

First, "The Index Medicus began its career under a commercial publisher, F. Leypoldt, in 1879 .... From [1900] . . . until 1903, when Billings was able to secure a grant from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, there was a gap . . . . With Carnegie funds the Index Medicus continued

its publication based on the Army Medical Library

until 1927, when it merged with the Quarterly

Cumulative Index. . . . From 1927 to 1931 the

Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus was a co- operative production of the Army Medical Library and The American Medical Association." 94 Second, "Making readily available the research

information of the world literature in its field is the task of the Alloys of Iron Research Committee

which is in process of preparing monographs on

the important iron-alloy systems. This useful,

expensive, and still unfinished project was financed

in part by Engineering Foundation, the National

Bureau of Standards, and Battelle Memorial Institute, in large part directly by the metallurgical

industries." 95

2.4. Role of International Groups

When the Smithsonian Institution's first sec- retary, Joseph Henry, initiated plans for cooperation in international bibliographic efforts in 1848,

he offered to be responsible for the indexing of the

American scientific literature if the British Association for the Advancement of Science would

undertake the rest.96 The immediate successor of

this proposal, the Catalogue of /Scientific Papers,

and several subsequent efforts involved collaboration and cooperation in sponsorship, in financing, or in working contributions. Thus the Catalogue

of Scientific Papers was produced from 1851 to 1925 under the auspices of the Royal Society with

financial support from the Society, the British

Government, individual donations and proceeds

from sale of the products; the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature was sponsored by an

international organization of participating nations

in collaboration with the Royal Society; and the

Concillium Bibliographicum provided bibliographic services on cards and an index in bulletin

94 Rogers and Adams, 1950 [490], p. 278.

95 Gillett, 1941 [21*6], p. 301.

95 Murra, 1951 [401], p. 26-27.

form financed by an international association of

learned societies and individual zoologists, governmental grants, gifts, and proceeds from sales.97 It is to be noted that less than a year after the

founding of the American Library Association,

"sixteen Americans journeyed to London to help

form the Library Association of the United Kingdom" and that this "1877 meeting is a landmark

in international library cooperation." 98

". . . The first international conference on bibliography . . . convened in Brussels in 1895 . . . was not international in the sense desired because

planning and issuance of invitations came too late to permit wide participation. Nevertheless an

Institut International de Bibliographie sanctioned

further adaptation of the Dewey system, recom- mended it for classifying bibliographies throughout the world, and authorized preparation of a Repertoire Bibliographique Universel . . . ." 99 In 1896, an international bibliographic conference was convened by the Royal Society in London.

Two following conferences, in 1898 and 1900, led

to the International Catalogue enterprise mentioned above.

This Conference also led to the establishment

of the International Federation for Documentation (Federation Internationale de Documentation, or FID) which "had its beginning in

the Institution International de Bibliographie,

founded in Brussels in 1895 by Henri la Fountaine

and Paul Otlet. In 1924, this association of in- dividuals was transformed into a federation of

national and international institutions." 100 Similarly there was established, in 1929, with

"active American participation," the International

Federation of Library Associations.101 In 1927, an International Library and Bibliographical

Committee was created during the golden jubilee

conference of the British Library Association

". . . The International Federation of Library

Associations (IFLA) grew out of this Committee's

work The chief contribution of the

IFLA to the international organization of bibliography has been to provide an international

meeting ground. . . . The exchange of information on techniques, processes, devices, training, current Avork, and common problems is instrumental in attempts being made to standardize

forms, methods, processes, nomenclature, etc.; to revise policy; and to revamp professional education." 102 "Further, both FID and IFLA, alone and in

various combinations, sponsor meetings, conferences, seminars, and other informational programs and in a number of countries on topics of

timely or special interest to all types of librarians

and documentalists." 103

97 Ibid., p. 28-29.

98 Ludington, 1954 [351], p. 194-195. "Murra, 1951 [401], p. 34-35.

100 Mutra, 1962 [402], p. 335.

101 Council on Library Resources, 1958 [140], p. 35.

ioa Murra, 1951 [401], p. 44.

103 Bonn, 1959 [68], p. 1444.

20
An example of the work of IFLA is the Inter- national Conference on Cataloguing Principles

held in Paris in 1961. The aim of the Conference was to "reach agreement on basic principles governing the choice and form of entry in the alphabetical catalogue of authors and titles." 104 Library

associations and other interested organizations in

all countries with which contact could be established, as well as a number of international organizations, were invited to participate. A "Statement of Principles" was drafted and distributed to

participants, Conference sessions were devoted to discussion and amendment of this draft. The

final "Statement" arrived at received the support

of a large majority of the participants. Some details of the principles adopted will be covered in the section of this report dealing with the cata- loging process.105 Further examples of cooperation and coordination on an international scale are the joint IFLAFID committees on standardization, on special

libraries and information bureaus, on training and

on cataloging rules; the United States National

Committee for the FID, representing 23 United

States private and governmental agencies plus

members at large, and the European Productivity

Agency sponsorship of meetings of representatives

of a number of countries, from 1958 onward, looking toward pooling of translation efforts. Both organizations joined with representatives

of ICSU (The International Council of Scientific

Unions) and ISO (The International Standards

Organization) in a meeting held at the Hague

in September 1960 "to discuss cooperatively developed programs dedicated to improving communication of information in the national

sciences." 106 Other examples of groups and organizations

concerned primarily with documentation are as follows

(a) "In February, 1952, a group of librarians

and information officers constituted itself under

the name of Classification Research Group and

submitted to Unesco a report emphasizing in its conclusion, the importance of research into establishing a standard classification scheme." 107

_(b) "The documentation organizations in the

aviation field in Germany . . . collaborate in the

Central Organization for Aviation Documentation. . . . There is cooperation and exchange with

documentation organizations in the aviation in- dustries in France and Great Britain." 108 The Institute of Information Scientists was or- ganized in London in 1958 "to promote and maintain high standards in scientific and technical in- formation work and to establish qualifications for

those engaged in the profession." 109 Among the

objectives of this organization are the development

and promotion of educational and training facili- ties and provision of publishing mechanisms as appropriate. Also, "a new international society in

the information field has been started in Paris

under the title, International Association of Documentalists . . . ." 110 International bodies whose primary concerns are those of international cooperation in areas of sci- entific investigation as such include both international federations of professional societies or

industry-wide common interest and multi-government international organizations—agencies of The

United Nations, Unesco, The Food and Agriculture Organization which "maintains the largest

library of any international organization in the

world," 111 multi-nation collaboration in the International Geophysical Year, and Euratom's

Centre European pour le Traitement de l'Information Scientifique, for example.

Further, "the Conseil International du Batioment has representatives from numerous European countries that had decided on a joint documentation program. Every national member compiles the titles of works that appeared in his country in the field of structural engineering and ex- change them with all other countries. Standard

form A7 (74 x 105 mm) has been selected for the

international exchange. The titles are supplemented by a table of contents in the language of

publication and (on the reverse side of the card)

a table of contents in English or French." 112 The International Council of Scientific Unions

has already been mentioned. "The Abstracting

Board is a nonprofit international organization

sponsored by ICSU and incorporated in Belgium.

It was established in 1950, its organization stemming from recommendations made at the 1949 International Abstracting Conference held in Paris.

The Board's object is to achieve, through international cooperation, improvement in the quality

of scientific abstracting and acceleration of distri- bution of the product among scientists." 113 It is reported with respect to Unesco's programs

that "in cooperation with the International Council of Scientific Unions, it will seek to extend the

coverage of abstracting journals to new disci- plines, a study will be made, in cooperation with

The International Federation of Documentation

and other international organizations, of means of

arranging for coordination between the services responsible for the translation of scientific work." 114 Perhaps under the precedents established by the

League of Nations in the establishment of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation,115 Unesco has been concerned with international coM4 Murra, 1951 [401 ]i, p. 44.

105 See p. 61 if. of this report.

109 Scientific Information Notes 2, No. 5, 1 (1960).

107 de Grolier, 1962 |"170]<, p. 10.

108 Frank, 1959 [200], p. 499.

109 Dyson and Farradane, 1962 [182], p. 13.

110 Scientific Information Notes 4, No. 5, 11 (1962). '"Murra, 1962 [402], p. 143.

112 Frank, 1959 [200], p. 500.

113 Science Information News 1, No. 4, 4 (1959). '"Veronese. 1960 [608]/, p. 8. "5 Murra, 1951 [401], p. 42-43.

21
operation in matters of documentation generally

and scientific information handling specifically.

Unesco activities include giving assistance under

its Technical Assistance Program for the establishment of national documentation centers in

various countries.116 Two other examples of Unesco's continuing in- terest in documentation are its Committee on Documentation for the Natural Sciences (which "has

concentrated a great deal on the production of

multilingual dictionaries. It has been useful on problems of Eussian literature in the natural sci- ences. It is . . . trying to take a stand in the

copyright position . . . and it has given a great

deal of thought to the subject of the use of authorabstracts,") 117 and the Unesco Clearing House for

Publications which, by 1954, was "a very large

enterprise for helping libraries to dispose of their

duplicates, not in a haphazard way, not merely as a matter of benevolence, but by systematic distri- bution to the libraries, and only to the libraries in

particular, where available' publications are wanted." 118 Again, "in furtherance of its role in improving

scientific documentation and terminology, Unesco

will promote the establishment and improvement

of scientific and technical documentation services

by member-states and international organizations.

Goals in encouraging bibliographic work give emphasis to the improvement and coordination of

scientific abstracting and translation services, and

the standardization and development of terminology, including investigation of means of preventing dissipation of effort." 119 The periodical

Unesco Bulletin for Libraries provides obvious

contributions to the fostering of cooperation, in- cluding some of the items cited in this report.

Unesco has also sponsored or cosponsored international conferences on the subject of cooperative

documentation : The International Conference on

Science Abstracting (1949) ; the First International Conference on Information Processing

(1959) , and the International Conference on Cataloging Principles (1961), among others.

Among the foreign organizations which include

cooperative documentation within their primary

fields of interest are the Association of Special

Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB),

London ; The International Association for Agricultural Librarians and Documentalists, Bad

Godesburg, Germany ; The Boyal Society of Great

Britain, London ; Union Francaise des Organismes

de Documentation (UFOD), Paris; International

Committee of Patent Office Experts Concerned

with the Promotion of Cooperative Research Programs in Information Retrieval (ICIREPAT) ; Duetsche Gesellschaft fur Dokumentation, Frankfort am Main ; Netherlands Institute for Documentation and Filing (NIDER), The Hague; and the

u6 Brownson, 1952 [86], p. 34, Mattson, 1962 [376], p. 330.

111 King, 1955 [3151. p. 7.

118 Evans, 1954 [189], p. 97.

119 Scientific Information Notes 3, 1, 1 (1961).

Abstracting Board of the International Council of

Scientific Unions (ICSU).

A comprehensive survey of the library, documentation and information services of a large

number of international scientific organizations

has been prepared by Murra (1962 [402]). For

the more than 400 organizations reporting one or more of these services, the subject interests in- cluded such specialized fields as research on bees,

cremation, deep drawing of sheet metals, medical

electronics, and stratigraphic classification and

nomenclature. Another unusual specialty, having

to do with unusual types of data and information,

is that of International Federation of Sound Hunters which maintains an archive of sound recordings

of distinctive natural, regional or local interest. "These recordings include certain sounds unique

in the world,_ typical sounds of daily life, and ex- ceptional noises, such as those of the 'singing'

dogs." 120

_ In 1959, the International Association of Microbiological Societies created the Permanent Committee for Microbiological and Immunological

Documentation with assigned responsibilities for

recommending procedures for the storage, selec- tion, and dissemination of scientific data concern- ing microbiological and immunological sci- ences." 121 The International Federation for Information

Processing_ (IFIP), the first international organization dedicated to all facets of the information

processing sciences, came into existence in January 1960, following the first International Conference on Information Processing, sponsored by

Unesco and held in Paris in June 1959. Organizations within IFIP are Technical Committee 1 (TCI) on terminology; TC2 on programming

languages, with Working Group 2.1 on the ALGOL language; and TC 3 on education. The

IFIP Committee on Terminology has affiliated with a similar committee of the International

Computation Centre of Rome to form the IFIP/

ICC/TC-1 Terminology group which is developing a multilingual glossary on computer concepts.

As a final example, we note that "incorporation

of the International Micrographic Congress has

been announced." 122

2.5. Role of Conferences and Meetings on Documentation

Cooperative and collaborative efforts in documentation have typically been initiated or fostered

through the medium of special conferences and

meetings.

At the historic Librarians' Convention of 1853,

the topics covered might well form the agenda for

similar conferences today : Congressional support

for a great national center, prevention of repetition of work of "preparation of titles, composi120 Murra, 1962 [4021, p. 360.

121 Murra, 1962 [402]i, p. 221.

1M Scientific Information Notes 5, No. 2, 3 (1963). 22
tion and correction of press, for copies of the same

book in different libraries," 123 securing uniformity

in the construction of catalogs, distribution of

public documents, indexing, questions of universal

classification systems, international exchange, and

others. Among the resolutions unanimously

adopted were

"Resolved, that this Convention be regarded as preliminary to the formation of a permanent Librarians' Association . . ." 124 And,

"Resolved, that the members of this Convention

cordially recommend the mutual interchange, so far as may be practicable, of the printed catalogues

of all our public libraries." 125 We have mentioned several early international

conferences; there have been many more since

World War II. A chronological listing of some

of the more important ones "will suffice to show the

scope of interest in cooperative activity in the field of information handling.

In June 1949, the Royal Society Scientific In- formation Conference was held in London ; it was

the first international conference devoted exclusively to the problems of handling of scientific and

technical information. It has been hailed as a "landmark in the exploration of problems of scientific communication both in and out of li- braries." 126 The following year, 1949, saw two Unesco-sponsored meetings, the first of which was that of the

Coordinating Committee on Abstracting and In- dexing in the Medical and Biological Sciences (the

outgrowth of informal efforts beginning in 1946

to develop cooperation between World Abstracts

and Excerpta Medica)}*-1 The second was the

International Conference on Science Abstracting,

from which soon emerged the Abstracting Board

of the International Council of Scientific Unions.128 In 1950, Unesco also sponsored a Conference on the Improvement of Bibliographic

Services.129 One of its key recommendations was : "In every

country a recognized planning organization should

be established to promote the development of

bibliographical and information services, to stimulate research on bibliographic methodology and

serve as a clearinghouse of information about re- search completed and in progress, to coordinate

effort and determine priorities, and to act as a link

with international planning bodies." 130 In January 1951, a conference on international

documentation was held in Paris under the sponsorship of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In August 1951, a meeting was held at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at which

123 "Proceedings of the Librarians' Convention . . . 1853," 1915

[466], p. 26.

124 Ibid, p. 62.

123 Ibid, p. 26.

120 Council of Library Resources, 1958 [140], p. 35.

12I Brownson, 1952 [86], p. 30.

128 Boutry, 1959 [74], p. 1503.

129 Brownson, 1952 [86]i, p. 30.

130 Ibid, p. 32 (recom. of Unesco 1950).

desiderata for evaluating chemical notation sys- tems were discussed, and proposed systems designed to encode chemical compounds were studied

in the light of these desiderata. This meeting pre- ceded the Diamond Jubilee meeting of the American Chemical Society; there the Dyson notation

system was selected on a tentative basis as the in- ternational standard system and an experimental

model of a new type IBM punched card machine

especially designed for literature searching purposes was demonstrated.

In June 1952, also at MIT, a Symposium on Machine Techniques for Information Selection was

held at which new techniques for analysis and

systematization of terminology for searching sys- tems were discussed. The IBM Electronic In- formation Searching System was also demonstrated in fuller detail. Again at MIT in 1952 there was held the First

International Conference on Machine Translation,

reflecting the widespread interest in the possibilities for such mechanized or computerized

operations.

An international congress on medical librarianship was held in London in July 1953 ; papers dealt

with such subjects as Unesco and medical librarianship and documentation; centralizing medical

library resources; a proposal for British combined national depositories and exchange centers for medical periodicals; the relationships of the

medical librarian to international cooperation and

the World Health Organization ; and the medical

library resulting from cooperation between university libraries and libraries in medical clinics,

laboratories and institutes. Also in 1953 a workshop on the Production and

Use of Technical Reports was conducted in Washington, D.C. It was noted that the ". . . widespread interest in improved handling of report

literature is evidenced by the fact that this workshop is sponsored jointly by a university, a scientific society, a documentation institute, a library

association and a government agency . . ." 131 (Catholic University of America, Division of

Chemical Literature of the American Chemical

Society, American Documentation Institute, Special Libraries Association, and National Science

Foundation, respectively).

Cunningham (1956 [152]) reports on the Brussels 1955 International Congress of Libraries and

Document Centers. There have been a series of conferences at the

Western Reserve University, first of national and

later of international scope, beginning with one

held in 1956, the Conference on the Practical Utilization of Recorded Knowledge—Present and

Future. The proceedings of this conference have

been recorded by Shera, Kent, and Perry (1956

[525]). The conference was cosponsored by 11

organizations reflecting the widespread interest

i3i Waterman, 1955 [630], p. 4.

23
in the subject. Besides the 37 panel talks and

full-scale papers presented in open session, six

closed discussions were held on specialized subject fields. As a result of the first two of these conferences, an informal organization called the Council on Documentation Research was created consisting of

representatives of Government organizations,

libraries, and professional associations in cooperation with the Center for Documentation and Communication Research of Western Reserve. The

former was the official sponsor for a 1958 confer- ence at which the latter's "Plan for the Creation

of a National Center for the Coordination of Scientific and Technical Information" was presented

and discussed (Shera et al., 1958 [526]).

In October 1956, the Second International Conference on Machine Translation was held at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology; in May

1957, the International Study Conference on Classification for Information Retrieval took place in

Dorking, England. The year 1957 also saw meetings of the International Advisory Committee for

Documentation and Terminology in Pure and Applied Science and of the International Advisory

Committee on Bibliography, both held in Paris

with the assistance and support of Unesco.

The Atomic Energy Commission has periodically programmed "specialized technical information workshops to help nations and international organizations with U.S. Atoms-for-Peace

collections to derive the maximum value from this resource. The first such workshop was held in

Geneva in May 1958." 132 In November 1958, the International Conference on Scientific Information (ICSI) was held in

Washington. When the plans for it were being

formalized, one of the areas for discussion was

entitled: "Responsibilities of Government, Professional Societies, Universities, and Industry for

Improved Information Services and Research."

The statement on the proposed scope of this area began with the important injunction: "The task

of developing and maintaining effective scientific information services is of such magnitude as to re- quire the resources and cooperation of all organizations with an interest in the progress of

science." 133 At this time, the responsibilities of

national governments with respect to developments

in this area were being quite newly recognized.

The ICSI Conference was also noteworthy as marking early examples of machine-produced per- muted title and KWIC (Key Word-In Context)

indexes to its preprints and for the adoption of

typographical compromises intended to facilitate machine experimentation with text from the typesetting paper tape. "When the proceedings of the

1958 International Conference on Scientific Information were prepared for publication, it was de132 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 49-50.

133 International Conference on Scientific Information, "Proceedings", 1959 [404], p. 1415.

cided that the Monotype tapes should be preserved;

for later availability to workers interested in machine processing experiments. For this reason, the; printer was given instructions to provide two

spaces rather than one after every period marking1 the end of a sentence. Notwithstanding the typographer's objections on aesthetic grounds, thei 'rivers' he predicted do appear on the pages of the1 printed proceedings, Otherwise, the distinction

between the use of the period as sentence termi-;

nator, as decimal point, and as a sign of abbreviation, would be difficult for a machine to make." 134

; An international meeting on "Automatic Documentation in Action" was held at Frankford am

Main in June, 1959, under the co-sponsorship of

FID, German organizations of scientists and of

documentalists and the Gmelin Institute.

The First International Conference on Information Processing was held in Paris in June 1959

[576]. At the symposium on the collection, stor- age, and retrieval of information, papers were

read describing the current research efforts and

trends in four geographic areas : the United States,

Western Europe, the United Kingdom, and the

U.S.S.R.

The International Conference for Standards on

a Common Language for Machine Searching and.

Translation was convened at Western Reserve

University in September 1959 (Kent, 1960 [310]).

In September 1961, the Third International

Conference on Machine Translation and Applied

Language Analysis was held at Teddington, England. The conference papers were quite technical

and detailed, but reflected a field of research then

"in its most creative and least predictable

phase." 135 The International Conference on Cataloging

Principles, sponsored by the International Feder- j ation of Library Associations (IFLA) with the

aid of a grant from the Council on Library Resources, Inc., held in Paris in October 1961, recom- mended that IFLA, in cooperation with other in- terested international organizations, "should study

the possible repercussions on cataloguing rules of

the use, especially in large general libraries, of

electronic machinery and of mechanical procedures in general." 136 In September 1961, a one-day conference of

FID's Study Group on Mechanical Storage and

Retrieval (FID/MSR) was held in London in

connection with the 27th general FID Conference.

The proceedings, covering reports of current activities in the U.S.A. (Gull, 1962 [228] )

, U.S.S.R.

(Mikhailov, 1962 [385]), Western Europe (Koelewijn, 1962 [322], and Japan (Niwa, 1962 [429])

are reported in the May 1962 issue of Revue Inter- nationale de la Documentation.

The Second International Congress on Information Processing (IFIP Congress 62) was held at

134 Stevens, 1962 (543], p. 65. «3 Davies, 1962 [156], p. 68. ""Poindron, 1962 [460], p. 22. 24
Munich in August-September 1962 [462]. Five

formal papers on information retrieval were read

in addition, a symposium was organized on advanced methods in information storage and re- trieval at which four more papers were presented.

The second International Congress on Medical

Librarianship was held in Washington, D.C., in

June 1963; and in September 1963, the third an- nual meeting of the International Committee of

Patent Experts . . . (ICIREPAT) was held in Vienna. The papers given at the ICIREPAT

meeting were on three aspects of technical reports

indexing, abstracting, and classification; storage

and retrieval systems; and planning, testing, and

evaluation of systems (Pfeffer, 1964 [456] )

3. Current Operations and Proposed

Activities

3.1. Background

In the United States, there is an increased concern about the proper exploitation of research and

development efforts, especially those sponsored or paid for in whole or in part by taxpayers' contributions. It has been noted that the Federal

Government must "play a key role in the process

of scientific communication because, among other

factors, as the primary [research and development] sponsor, it becomes the primary beneficiary." 1 The extent of Federal support has contributed to the flood of unpublished, but often

highly and currently valuable, literature—the

progress report, the research-in-progress summary, the summary technical report, and the unpublished, orally delivered papers reporting re- sults at seminars, briefing sessions, conferences,

and symposia.

A new characteristic of contemporary research

relevant to enhanced dissemination of scientific data is the "vastly increased rate of knowledge

conversion [from discovery to application] ....

This rate ... in some instances has shrunk to a matter of weeks, stimulating a completely unprecedented sense of urgency and even compulsion for fluent availability of data on current

research." 2 The present report is indicative of U.S. Government concern, of inter-agency collaboration, and

of the joint interests of Federal agencies and professionally oriented organizations on the mutual

problems of coordination of efforts, promotion of

collaboration, and search for compatibility in

their various efforts towards improved utilization

of the records of scientific and technical

information.

3.2. Current Activities in Federal Agencies

This concern of the Federal Government ex- tends back, as previously noted, to the days of the

J TJ.S. Senate, 1961 [591], p. 44.

2 Ibid, p. 44.

establishment of the Smithsonian Institution and

the Library of Congress. But, although the Government's concern is of long standing, the greatest

activity looking towards this improved use of in- formation has taken place in recent years, particularly in the period since World War II. The recent study by the House of Representatives Select Committee on Government Research

has examined the documentation and dissemination of research and development results, culminating in a report which spells out the extent of the

Federal Government's efforts in scientific and

technical information services.3 Major information programs are carried out by nine executive

departments and 12 agencies; 259 facilities have

been established to ease the flow of information.

The Select Committee's primary recommendation

is for even more coordinated federal effort, in- cluding a central clearinghouse for the coordination of all foreign federal activities in

documentation and dissemination of information.

In 1963, an NAS/NRC study of communication

problems in biomedical research included the fol- lowing comments in its report : "Pressures for ac- tion are developing in both the legislative and the

executive arms of government. For some time,

the Senate Committee on Government Operations

has been probing and exhorting. Meanwhile, the

Federal Council on Science and Technology has

been working to improve the exchange of scientific information among the many government

agencies involved in research, and the Office of

Scientific Information Services of the National

Science Foundation has been encouraging the sys- tematic study of problems in communication and

the search for more efficient methods of processing

scientific information, as well as promoting co- operation among all activities, both private and

governmental, that handle scientific information." 4 The "probings" and exhortations" not only of

Senator Humphrey's Subcommittee but of other

Congressional groups and of the Crawford and

Weinberg Panels have raised questions of major

national policy affecting, directly or indirectly,

the problems of cooperation, convertibility and

compatibility among information systems. First

is the issue of centralization-decentralization and,

if centralization, how much, especially the question

of a single, centralized national service perhaps

after the model of the Russian UINITI.

However, "There is by no means agreement on

the modus operandi for achieving increased co- ordination. Particularly moot is the issue of what

the ultimate Federal role should be. Many ob- servers express deep concern lest a monolithic

Federal information operation be attempted.

But the urgent need for increased Federal and for

3 US House, 1964 [589], p. 5. See also "Better Information

Coordination Urged," 1964 [61], p. 27.

4 "Communication Problems in Biomedical Research," 1963

[403], p. 1. 25
public-private teamwork is now conceded virtually

everywhere." 5 At the 1958 meeting of the Council on Documentation Research, Western Reserve's "Plan for the

Creation of a National Center for the Coordination of Scientific and Technical Information" was presented. "The discussion was lively and

lengthy . . . comments ranged from a direct con- demnation of existing agencies that have had

major responsibilities in this field and that have

not taken the initiative, to complacent acceptance

of the status quo." 8 While Congressional interests in national information centers has continued, the consensus re- mains much as it was a few years ago : "The staff, following study of the problems involved, has con- cluded that a Federal center of documentation,

originally proposed in the 85th Congress, is not

feasible at this time in view of the opposition of

scientists to such a centralization of science information activities under Federal jurisdiction and

control." 7 In general, then, the effect to date has been the

intensification, extension, and improvement of

existing services, the establishment of new mechanisms for coordination and cooperation, the initia- tion of new services in specific areas, and in- creasing attention to large-scale mechanization

especially in DDC, NASA, and NLM and with

serious attention to the problems of planning for

possible automation in the Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information, the National Agricultural Library, and the Library of

Congress, as well as in somewhat more specialized

areas. Examples of these different programs include

bulletins which announce the availability of re- ports and often give abstracts of their contents; the technical information divisions of agencies

such as the Atomic Energy Commission and the

coordinating organizations such as the Defense

Documentation Center; hearings held before different committees of the Congress; the establishment of new agencies such as the National Science

Foundation and its Office of Scientific Information

Services or new coordinating groups such as the

COSATI of the Executive Branch ; the activities of these new agencies in support of research and

cooperative undertakings, and studies on the possibilities for mechanization of very large-scale in- formation processes in the Patent Office and in the

Library of Congress.

"In the general field of scientific information,

the Government's role during the past four to five years has become increasingly dynamic . . . All

branches of the Government have come to recog- nize that the effective dissemination of scientific information plays a key role in scientific achievement." 8

5 Cahn, 1962 [94 ]l, p. 24.

8 Shera et al., 1958 [526] p. 83.

' U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 29.

8 Adkinson, 1962 [5], p. 49.

Finally, it should of course be noted that grants

and other means of support to research in the fields

| of scientific communication, information storage,!

selection and retrieval, mechanized translation,

linguistic data processing, and the like, which in- volve potential contributions to increased converj tibility and compatibility, are provided by the;

National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval

Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Re-i

search, the National Institutes of Health, and

others.

3.3. Traditional Cooperative Activities

The precedents for cooperation or compatibility

in the control and utilization of scientific and technical literature, so vital to expanding science and

technology today, may well lie in the efforts by the more conventional libraries to achieve cooperation

in acquisition, cataloging, indexing or classifying,

preparing bibliographies, searching, storing, and

retrieving. In many of these areas, agencies of

the Federal Government have participated and, in some cases, provided examples of leadership.

Cooperative efforts among conventional li- braries have traditionally been devoted to such

areas as the following

1. Exchange of information about availability

of publications. This includes (a) the preparation \ of catalogs of all, or a selected portion, of the

holdings of an individual institution and union | catalogs of the holdings of particular institutions i within a given area; (b) the preparation of pub- : lished versions of such catalogs, or restricted parts

of the catalog information given for each publication, e.g., union lists of serials received, indexes,

j etc. All of these services provide, inter alia, a ! basis for interlibrary loan services.

2. Arrangements of common efforts for the purchase, acquisition, and exchange of publications.

3. Development of techniques for the physical

identification (e.g., descriptive cataloging) and

subsequent citation of publications.

4. Development of techniques for the subject content identification of publications and for the

ordering of groups or categories for such identifi- cation. These techniques have resulted in the compilation and subsequent exchange of both subject

heading and other authority lists, and other classi- fication mechanisms. Some of these have been

accepted in whole or in part as voluntary inter- library standards.

_ These traditional cooperative efforts have been

either wholly voluntary, sponsored by professional

societies, industry, or the government in a particular nation, or sponsored by international cooperation at the individual, professional community,

industry or trade, or nation-to-nation level. As a

result of these efforts, partial networks of cooperative action today do link to some extent libraries

and information centers, public and private, aca- demic, industrial, governmental, national and

international.

26
The outline of areas in which cooperative efforts

I have been made can serve as a useful means of

discussing current operations and proposed activi-

^ ties in cooperative and coordinated information

II handling. This outline follows the normal flow

B' of information, at least that portion of the normal

j

F

' flow which falls within the scope of this report:

! communication or dissemination, including publication of secondary sources ; acquisition _ and

*j exchange of publications ; analysis and identification; systematization of analysis techniques; stor- age and search. We shall also examine attempts

and current results of efforts toward standardization of operations, equipment, and the like.

h- 3.4. Dissemination and Publication of

ad Secondary Sources

he I

0E Prerequisite to the acquisition of scientific and

. (technical information items is awareness of availa-

'jjj bility of information that has been generated and

0

{ Ithat can be communicated in some form or another,

j. whether formal or informal, oral or recorded,

^published or unpublished. Historically, steps

i! taken toward cooperation, compatibility, and con-

,ia vertibility in the handling of scientific and technical literature have been directed to solutions of the

l following typical questions: "What is available,

,j who has recorded it, and are copies of the recorde ings available?"; "Who has what, and where, and

M are copies available?" and "What do I hold, and

K you do not, and vice versa, that we may exchange ?

[j Of first importance to a study of cooperation

IS and compatibility, then, is the area of making

available information about what information

| items exist and where they may be obtained.

^ While libraries and information centers are still principally geared to materials in the form of the

r

_ printed book, periodical, report, catalog card and

paper-stock photocopies, this has been and is pri-

.] marily a matter of cooperation. However, with

l([ recognition of the potentialities of mechanization,

questions of checking duplications of coverage,

c t

; 'identification of whether one listed item is or is not

ie

' the same as another, of interfiling and updating in

iji machine-processed files, create new problems of

a- : compatibility and convertibility, extending to such

t specific details as citation practice, format, characi- ter sets, and even the spelling of authors' names.

31 This first area is that of listings of monographic

r publications, of periodicals, and of scientific and

technical reports of Federal Government agen-

' B cies; of the traditional secondary publications,

a'

! including abstracting and indexing journals, criti1-

i cal reviews and state-of-the-art reports, biblil' ographies, and, more recently, "current contents"

• '

; services and citation indexes, and of clearingj houses for current research projects or for special-

[ ized subject areas. We shall discuss these various

,

; aspects of the dissemination of information in

; ; turn.

3.4.1. Listings of Monographic Publications

Listings of publications are of value for search

not only to people within the organization compiling them but also to people outside the organization who wish to know of the "holdings." In at- tempting to create these lists, a natural collection

unit is the total publication of a given country or community, this concept being known as "national

bibliography" and defined by E. Thompson as_"A

list (or, collectively, lists) of works published in a country ; or, in an extended sense, of works about

a country, by natives of a country living in that

country or elsewhere, or written in the language of

a country." 9 A large number of the lists discussed

in this section may be regarded as making up part

of a national bibliography.

The volumes bearing the title National Union

Catalog give documentary information concern- ing the holdings of the Library of Congress (LC)

as represented by the printed cards in its catalog,

as well as holdings of libraries throughout the

country as reported to LC. They are compiled

with the cooperation of the Association of Research Libraries and that of the Committee on Resources of American Libraries of the American

Library Association.

"The National Union Catalog, established in

the Library in 1926, serves as a means of locating

books of research value in the collections of cooperating libraries. These libraries send copies of

the catalog cards they prepare for their own use

to the Library for filing in the NUC ....

"The Union Catalog has grown steadily since its formation ... It now contains approximately

14 million cards. The number of libraries reporting their holdings to the NUC has also grown over

the years. The effective use of the NUC requires

not only that a list of the symbols used in identifying the cooperating libraries be circulated but that

this list be revised and brought up to date in successive editions." 10 Problems of this nature hamper the development and use of such catalogs and their solution is not easy to produce. "Federal libraries participate in a good many union catalog systems. However, taken as a whole, the network of union cata- logs is spotty and does not make much sense. How

far one should go, as a matter of national policy,

in encouraging and assisting the development of

such catalogs is a question that merits careful

study." 11 Mechanization offers new prospects for the preparation of catalogs and lists of holdings—"the

printed catalog produced by means of automatic

equipment combines the best features of the con- ventional card catalog and the traditional catalog,

and adds to both features that would have been

unbelievable a generation ago." 12 On the other

•Thompson, 1943 [569], p. 90. "Statement, U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 86. "Evans, 1963 [188]., p. 23. u Vertanes, 1961 [609], p. 242.

27
hand, such prospects offer new challenges to convertibility and compatibility, making, in particular, the problems of descriptive cataloging a

necessary first step in agreement. An example of current cooperative ventures is the joint project of

the Medical Libraries of Columbia, Harvard, and

Yale for computer preparation of catalogs for

books published from 1960 onward (Kilgour et al., 1963 [315]).

Another specific example of a cooperative venture in union catalog preparation and use, with

compatibility achieved by means of centralized

services, is the Lake County Libraries. All the

libraries in this system "share in a growing book

collective ... A union catalog in book form, in

single or multiple copies as required, is furnished

to each participating library ; closed circuit tele- type communication provides the necessary means

of sharing the common collection as reflected in

the union catalog." 13 The British have a comprehensive national

bibliography, the British National Bibliography

(BNB), begun in January 1950 and published by

the Council of the British National Bibliography

Ltd., "representing the British Museum, the Library Association, the Publisher's Association, and

seven other bodies. ... It is published weekly,

with quarterly and annual cumulations including

a combined author, title and subject index to its entries which are classified according to the Dewey

Decimal Classification." 14 The publication in 1937 of the Union List of

Newspapers was one of the early cooperative enterprises in this area. By means of this publication

and the widespread use of microfilm, beginning in

about 1940, a cooperative project was proposed and

promulgated for filming important runs of news- papers "in publishers' offices and obscure libraries .. . and placing copies in the large libraries

of the nation, a step for which historians have

every cause to be grateful." 15 Publication of the National Catalog of Patents was announced in 1963 by Bowman and Littlefield, Inc., of New York City, in cooperation with the

U.S. Patent Office. The announcement stated that

the "searcher will find all the patents in a given

area of interest grouped together by Classes and

Subclasses as defined by the Patent Office. Patents

granted in their respective fields (as well as allied

patents which have primary listing in other fields) are shown in the form of one major claim and one drawing as exemplified in the Official Gazette. This inevitably results in an expansion of search

horizons."

The Library of Congress Information Bulletin

announced in its November 4, 1963 issue [104] that

LC with the Association of Research Libraries

plans a centralized register of all master negatives

of microfilms, whether in process or already produced. (A "master microfilm" is a negative pro13 Burns, 1964 [89], p. 14. "Metcalfe, 1959 [382], p. 254.

15 Downs [179], p. 65.

duced under optimum specifications and maintained under archival conditions for the purpose]

of making prints only.) The new project follows 1 earlier activities at LC (which has a Microfilm!

Clearing House for reports received in the Union j Cataloging Division regarding available micro-]

films), and activities of the Philadelphia Biblio-j

graphical Center, which published the Union List\

of Microfilms during 1951-1961.

One of the prominent commercial compilers;

for keys to printed matter is H. W. Wilson Com-J

pany, the publisher since 1900 of The Unitedi

States Catalog; Books in Print. Beginning with!

1928, the company expanded this publication and!

gave it another name: Cumulative Book Index!

It is a world list of books in the English language,,

including "publications in the regular book trade,

privately printed books, regular importations oi American publishers, Canadian books (in English) not also published in the United States, publications of universities, societies, scientific insti- tutions, and a selected list of publications of the

national and state governments." 16 The index, published nine months each year in- cludes frequent cumulations for ease of searching

and has been issued in biennial cumulations be-: ginning with 1957. It is regarded as "indispen-ji

sable: (1) in order department work; (2) as an adjunct to the library's own catalog; (3) as al reference tool for many subjects: verification of

titles, authors' names and dates, authorship when!

only the title or subject of a book is known, list! of books on a given subject, etc." 17 The publications of R. R. Bowker Co. of Newi

York City include the Publishers'' Weekly: The]

Book Industry Journal, which contains lists of! new publications of the week, lists of books an-j

nounced for publication, news notes, editorials and

articles, advertisements of books wanted, and the!

like. The Publishers'' Trade List Annual, which

consists of a collection of publishers' catalogs, ar-j

ranged alphabetically by publishers' names, begad

publication in 1873 and was supplemented in 1948; by Books in Print: an Author-Title Series Index)

to the Publishers'1 Trade List Annual. It consists of two indexes bound in one volume; thej

first arranged alphabetically by author and editor J the second alphabetically by title and series. These give the publisher and price of a book, and

further information may be obtained by consult-!; ing the pertinent publisher's catalog in Publishers'1 Trade List Annual.

Beginning in 1957, a companion volume to; Books in Print has been published, The Subject '- Guide to Books in Print: an Index to the Pub- \ Ushers'1 Trade List Annual, generally following;

the headings assigned by the Library of Congress.i

Another Bowker publication, American Book Publishing Record, issued since 1960 and a record of

18 Winchell. 1951 [649],, p. 21.

17 Ibid, p. 21-22.

28
American book publication, uses the forms of

entry, Dewey Classification number, and subject

headings as established by LC for its catalog cards.

3.4.2. Listings of Periodicals and Periodical Articles A major American effort in the listing of serials or periodicals is the Union List of Serials, published by H. W. Wilson Co. The second edition was published in 1943, and has had two supplements since then. This edition records, for more

than five hundred libraries in the United States and Canada, the holdings of periodicals and periodical-like publications whose first issue appeared

previous to 1950. The Union List is called "one

of the greatest landmarks of American librarianship. After nearly thirty years of constant use

it has come to be recognized as a tool of proven and

indispensable value." 18 The last supplement

covers serials in existence on Dec. 31, 1949.

Beginning in 1950, LC has supplied an adjunct

to the Union List in its publication New Serial

Titles, a union list of serials commencing publication after December 31, 1949 and received by the

Library of Congress and cooperating libraries. The entries are coded by their subject content, by

language, and by country of origin. The New

Serial Titles was prepared under the sponsorship

of the Joint Committee on the Union List of Serials, consisting of thirteen organizations, including the ALA, the American Association of Law

Libraries, the Theatre Library Association, and

the H. W. Wilson Company. It is of interest to note that Neio Serial Titles has been regarded as "the first successful nonexperimental punchedcard catalog of periodicals." 19 The British have a publication similar to the

Union List entitled World List of Scientific Periodicals, the third edition of which was published

in 1952 and records the contents of 247 libraries,

with about 50,000 titles. Volume 1 of the fourth

edition appeared in 1963 and the remaining two

volumes are to become available soon. Further efforts involve continuing cooperation

"The Joint Committee on the Union List of Serials—a non-profit corporation representing 13

American and Canadian library associations and

bibliographical institutions—has signed an agree- ment with H. W. Wilson Company ... to publish

and distribute a third and final edition of the

Union List of Serials in Libraries of the United

States and Canada. Publication is tentatively

scheduled for early 1965." 20 In the United States there have been numerous

instances of the establishment of union lists of

periodicals in different parts of the country. Librarians of Houston, Texas, in evolving a plan for

a Houston Technical Information Center, con- ducted a survey of the scientific and technological

serials available in the area that resulted in the

publication of the Houston List, showhig the lo- cation and availability of more than 8,000 titles. 21 Similarly, librarians who were active in the Minneapolis Chapter of the Special Libraries Association, produced a union list of periodicals, plus a planned pattern of periodical holdings and negotiations to eliminate overlap and extend coverage.

"The master list shows the libraries taking a cer- tain periodical, with an indication of which li- brary would be responsible for the longest file." 22

3.4.3. Listings of Reports of Government Agencies

In addition to the traditional methods of publication, newer and less conventional forms include

the technical report, the unpublished conference

or symposium paper, the mimeographed or otherwise informally prepared preprint and reprint,

publication in "auxiliary" or "deposit" form, and

computer-produced outputs for both primary- and

secondary-type publications. Of these, the technical report is of most importance and interest to

this report.

First, because the problems of distribution and

subsequently of announcement were major factors

in the creation of technical information activities in various Government agencies. Second, because

"a significant proportion of the people . . . con- cerned with the control, storage, and dissemination of reports are, themselves, new to reports, and

to bibliographic organization in general." 23 Third, because the nature of the report content aggravates, on the one hand, the need for multiplesubject categorization and indexing in depth, and, on the other hand, in view of its probably high

rate of obsolescence, the problem of speed and

currency in announcement and dissemination.

Thus, "if the large report collection centers are going to disregard reports that are more than four

years old, what is the searcher going to do when he comes upon a reference in an abstracting journal

to a report that is, say, five years old?" 24 A

fourth reason, not entirely independent, relates to the more specific problems of numbering-identification and the attribution (or otherwise) of

authorship.

A rationale for the handling of communications

resulting from particular agency fundings, for

specific in-house and contractor benefit, explains

much of the early development of technical in- formation handling activities outside the mainstream of conventional systems for the publication, dissemination, storage, and selective recall of recorded knowledge. There was, on the one

hand, a particularly parochial recognition of re- sponsibility. There was, on the other hand,

all too often an assumption by traditional and

conventional sources of information handling

services that the informational material would

(a) find its way eventually into the traditional

18 Osborn, 1954 [4441, p. 26. "Dewev. 1959 [173], p. 36.

=° Scientific Information Notes 4, 5, 15 (1962).

21 Richardson. 1963 [481], p. 298. » Miller, 1963 [387], p. 295. "Herner, 1952 [257], p. 1110.

24 Herner and Herner, 1959 [254], p. 192.

208-371—66 3 29
pattern and could be ignored until it did, (b)

would be of ephemeral interest unless and until

"tried out" by the conventional methods of referee- ing, editing and redacting, and ( c ) posed too many

problems with respect to traditional cataloging,

indexing, and abstracting principles to make

coverage practically feasible. Warheit comments in 1952 that only three years

previously "one of the largest abstract journals

implied rather strongly that report literature was

not too important and refused to accept the re- ports of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission be- cause they were not generally available to the

scientific community." 2r' Other representative comments with respect to reports are as follows

"It was not until the second World War that

the technical report began to play a leading role in the communication of research results within

the government. The Office of Scientific Research

and Development (OSRD) ... let a large number of research and development contracts with

universities, research institutions, and industrial

organizations. The research programs of the

OSRD were, for the most part, decentralized . . . It was essential to develop a means whereby the

research groups working on related projects might

keep in close touch with each other. Moreover,

since a large part of the research was classified from the standpoint of military security, normal

channels of publication could not be used and means of communication subject to security control had to be developed. The technical report

served both purposes. This prompt interchange

of information was a very important element of

the success of the research efforts of the OSRD." 28 "Reports are a more primitive form of scientific and technical literature than professional journal

articles because they are produced earlier in the

research program. Since the scientific community

now consumes information virtually as quickly

as it is produced, this information must be re- corded as quickly as possible." 27 "The progress report is important because it is the only available written source of the material

until the summary report or technical journal article is published and delays in writing and publishing summary reports or journal articles may

run as high as a year or two. Moreover, progress

reports are usually the only written source of negative information, that is, the record of the diffi- culties and failures experienced with certain ex- periments or techniques ; and of the incidental data

such as the preparations necessary for ex- periments and the rationale for adopting certain

approaches." 28 The Federal Government accepted early the re- sponsibility for technical report literature by

creating information processing operations in four

^Warheit, 1952 [627], p. 109.

*i Waterman, 1955 [630], pp. 4-5.

27 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 45.

*> Ibid, p. 45-46.

of its agencies, which have evolved as the Defense

Documentation Center (DDC), the information

organizations of the National Aeronautics and

Space Agency (NASA) and the Atomic Energy

Commission (AEC), and the Clearinghouse for

Federal Scientific and Technical Information.

These were established to "acquire, collect, and dis- seminate scientific and technical report literature

which industry had both created and demanded

during the war years, when the serious lack of

communication and availability of information was intensely felt." 29 This mission is being ac- complished as follows : "The report problem has

been approached from two opposing directions at once. First, an interagency cooperative program

is assuring that the maximum number of reports

prepared with public funds is called to the atten- tion of and made available to the public. The

second attack is on the information itself, to guide

as much of it as possible into more conventional

information channels." 30 Miller indicates that the bibliographical specialist handling report literature has special problems: (1) The unprecedented volume has caused

"classical techniques of acquisition, handling, bibliographical processing, circulation and distribution to bog down." (2) Report literature "is more

dependent upon a high degree of bibliographical

control than almost any other form, and actually

has less applied to it." 31 One means taken by government agencies in

trying to control report literature is to prepare an- nouncement bulletins, lists of newly generated or newly acquired technical reports and summaries

such as AEC's Summary Technical Reports or the

Report Bibliography of the Navy Research Section which was a "quickly prepared bibliography

which consists of photoreproductions of pertinent

catalog cards from the NRS and other Library

of Congress files." 32 These bulletins or lists may

contain bibliographic citations to reports, descriptions or abstracts of the reports, and also subject

clues or indexes to their contents. We shall consider here only the form of the listings, and shall discuss the abstracts and indexes in the next

section.

First, we note that some reports "may be printed

and placed on sale by the Government Printing

Office, in which case their availability is an- nounced in the Monthly Catalog of U.S. government publications and other advertising media

employed by this office." 33 Announcements of acquisitions, holdings, and

processed items available in microform began al- most as early as the post-World War establishment of organizations such as CADO, Navy

Research Section, and OTS, but, at first, only in

informal mimeographed form. For example, be29 Painter, 1963 [445], p. 37-38.

30 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592];, p. 112.

31 Miller. 1952 [386], p. 92-94.

32 Gray, 1952 [228], p. 58.

33 Herner and Herner, 1959 [254], p. 188.

30
ginning in 1946, the Navy Research Section at the

Library of Congress issued TIP (Technical Information Pilot) with abstracts of items processed.

On the later merger of NRS with CADO to for- mer ASTIA, the TAB, which originally stood for

Technical Announcement Bulletin (now Technical Abstracts Bulletin) began to be issued from

1953 onward.

The now semimonthly TAB of DDC has a subject index with an alphabetic arrangement of the

descriptors that have been given an asterisk, i.e., those descriptors which indicate the major technical emphases in each report in that issue of

TAB. In the Technical Abstract Bulletin Cumulative Index, since the July-December 1962 issue,

the entries are composed of three parts: (1) dis- play of all descriptors assigned a report; (2) cor- porate author or agency preparing the report ; and

(3) the AD number, the pertinent issue of the

TAB, and the major subject division of the Distribution Guide.

At OTS, also, the present U.S. Government Research Reports (USGRR) had early predecessors.

By 1951, some 300 of the unclassified or declassified reports per month were being selected, listed,

and annotated or abstracted in the Bibliography

of Technical Reports. Selection was directed to- ward the interests of industrial laboratories and

each monthly issue contained a four-page Newsletter digesting those items of probable interest to small business firms (Gray, 1951 [221]).

OTS and its successor, the Clearinghouse for

Federal Scientific and Technical Information,

have been concerned with as wide dissemination as possible of the material for which it is responsible

. . we do not rely on Government efforts alone

to announce the availability of the material. We

have enlisted the cooperation of the technical press

and the major abstracting and indexing societies. In fact, we consider their interest and cooperation

to be one of the most important factors in prompt

and effective distribution." 34 In the July 5, 1961, issue of the USGRR of OTS

and the July 1, 1961, issue of TAB of DDC (then

ASTIA) there was announced a cooperative ar- rangement for making DOD research information more widely available to the American public.

Thereafter the first section of the USGRR would

consist of the first "white" section of the TAB,

listing only the unclassified reports having unlimited distribution. The second section of the

USGRR would list reports of civilian agencies of

the Government and military research reports not

found in the TAB, most of them older reports ac- quired by OTS on specific industry request. Each

of the reports listed in the first section of TAB

listed the OTS purchase price of the report. OTS

made three indexes available for the year 1962.

The major portion of two of these indexes is for

the unclassified reports having unlimited distribution which DDC and OTS announce almost simul34 Green, 1959 [226], p. 119.

taneously twice a month. A third OTS 1962 index was for the nonmilitary and older research reports

distributed by OTS. This index uses descriptors

to indicate the subject content of the other reports

distributed by OTS, except that there is no indication of the subject content for the reports of the

AEC.

NASA in 1963 issued its Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports (STAR), volume 1, having

published the Technical Publications Announcements during 1962. The STAR bulletins are pre- pared by the Scientific and Technical Information

Facility operated for NASA by Documentation,

Incorporated, of Bethesda, Maryland. STAR is arranged in two major sections, the first having

complete bibliographic citations with informative

abstracts arranged by subject category and the sec- ond having indexes for subject, corporate and

personal authors, report number, and accession

number.

An interesting instance of cooperation between

the Federal Government and an institutional or- ganization is the relationship between STAR and

the International Aerospace Abstracts issued by

the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. STAR lists both unclassified report liter- ature prepared by NASA, its contractors, and

other responsible organizations in the United

States and abroad, and articles prepared by au- thors from NASA and its contractors that appear

in learned and technical journals. The International Aerospace Abstracts lists what is usually

considered as the published literature. These two

publications are each issued biweekly, appearing on alternate weeks, and use identical subject cate- gories and indexing procedures.

The Bibliography of Agriculture of the National

Agricultural Library; Nuclear Science Abstracts,

AEC; and Index Medicus of the National Library

of Medicine also provide coverage of Government

agency reports, particularly those emanating from

the parent organizations and their contractors. However, since these provide abstracting and/or

indexing coverage of the published literature, we

shall discuss them in the next section, mentioning

here only the problems of report numbering.

The numbers for reports announced in STAR

and TAB are assigned as the documents arrive in

the respective places of accession. The reports are not arranged in numerical order in these announce- ment bulletins. In the Nuclear-Science Abstracts

(NSA ) of the AEC, however, the reports are an- nounced in strict numerical order. Each entry in

the bulletin is supplied with another number for

ordering purposes, generally a number indicating

the origin of the report in the AEC.

Correlation Index: Document Series and PB

Reports, edited by G. E. Runge and published by

the SLA in 1953 [501], was responsive to the ur- gent need for correlation between the numbers used

by primary and secondary publications. It includes the unclassified and declassified reports

31
listed in Volumes 1 to 17, January 1946 through

June 1952, of the Bibliography of Technical Reports. The correlation, of course, was primarily

with the varying schemes for numbering the sci- entific and technical reports issued by, or with the

authority of, agencies of the government. "As a

check-list, it will aid in assembling a collection of

reports in any one of the series included. It will

also help in ordering serial-numbered unclassified

and declassified reports." 35 Redman and Godfrey have edited a Dictionary

of Reports Series Codes (1962 [469]) which have

been used by agencies of the United States and

foreign governments for identifying technical re- ports. These report numbers "offer many advantages for references to security-classified material.

When properly used, they provide positive identification of material, and depending on their

makeup, may indicate source, date, subject, or

availability." But the editors suggest that "codes

have become so numerous as to be almost meaningless. Conceived as a shortcut in report reference,

they are now often a handicap." 36 This 648-page

Dictionary was compiled by the Report Series

Dictionary Committee on the Rio Grande Chapter

of SLA.

3.4.4. Abstracting and Indexing Services and Publications The common distinction made between types of

publications calls an original article, book, or pamphlet primary publication, while an abstract

index, digest, or review is referred to as secondary

publication. Of particular interest to this review

are the secondary publications, especially the in- dexing services for periodicals, which manifest

many cooperative and collaborative operations

and proposals. The usage of the word "index"

which interests us is that of an alphabetical list of references to literature in general, usually

printed separately. This index "is an independent publication in book form, periodically issued

and cumulated, listing journal article references

arranged in some order, of which the minimum is by subject." 37 In addition, periodical indexes

and abstracts "cover many periodicals . . . [they]

have been developed to do for many libraries

what each separately cannot do for itself, and to avoid duplication of work; they supplement li- brary catalogues, and in much of the reference

and bibliographical research work of reference

and research libraries they may be used more than

the libraries' own catalogues Periodical in- dexes are used as issued and in cumulations and

for an indefinite period for specific reference, but

being alphabetical they cannot be conveniently

used for generic survey of literature, that is, for

the survey of both the special and the general lit- erature in a fairly wide field such as chemistry, or organic chemistry, or a subclass of organic chem-

^Runge, 1953 [501], p. iil. 88 Redman and Godfrey, 1962 [474], p. 1.

s'Taine, 1962 [551], p. 147.

istry. But the fact that they continue to be alphabetical, even in countries with a strong prejudice

in favor of classified cataloguing, shows that they

meet a major need, that of specific reference. Abstracting journals are used as issued, for generic

survey, for which they are more or less classi- fied . . ." 3 f Following the middle of the nineteenth century

important developments in the making of indexes

to periodicals took place in the United States. W. F. Poole, "was preparing the way for his great

indexes to the periodicals of the nineteenth century. These were a new advance, and a considerable one : instead of an index to one periodical for one year, Poole introduced the idea of one index

to many periodicals covering a considerable number of years." 39 In 1853, "a copy of a new index to the Periodical

Literature of England and America was exhibited

to the Convention, and on motion of Mr. Folsom,

it was unanimously Resolved, that we have examined the work entitled 'Index to Periodicals,' by

W. F. Poole, Librarian of the Mercantile Library

of Boston, and that we approve of its plan and

execption, and we recommend that a similar system

of indexing to be extended to the transactions and

memoirs of learned societies." 40 Next we note that "the first large-scale indexing

of current medical-journal literature using insti- tutional team-approach methods had its start in

1879 with he publication, by this Library, of the

first volume of the first work to use the title Index

Medicus. This was followed in 1880 by the first volume of the first series of the Index-Catalogue

of the Library of the Surgeon GeneraVs Office.'

1

'' 41 The Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature,

produced by H. W. Wilson, appeared in 1901.

"Each article in a periodical was indexed under

its author and under its specific subject. There

were numerous cross-references to link up each subject with related subjects and with aspects of it- self, and a very high standard of consistency and

accuracy was maintained from the first." 42 The

Readers' Guide index was for the nonteclmical

periodical of general circulation. Wilson started

the Industrial Arts Index, subject index to a se- lected list of engineering and trade periodicals, in

1913. With the volume for 1958, the title was

changed to Applied Science and Technology Index. In the volumes there is a list of abbreviations

for the periodicals indexed, with their more extensive titles, and the location of the publisher of each

periodical and its cost. Engineering Index was first published by Engineering Magazine in the years 1892-1918, with

the title for Volume 1, 1884-1891, Descriptive In- dex of Current Engineering Literature. From

1918 through 1933, the publisher was the Ameri38 Metcalfe, 1959 [381], p. 85-86.

39 Collinson, 1959 [131], p. 18.

40 "Proceedings of the Librarians' Convention . . . 1853", 1915

[46i6], p. 44. "National Library of Medicine, 1963 [412], p. 1.

42 Collinson, 1959 "[131],, p. 19. 32
can Society of Mechanical Engineers, and since

then, Engineering Index, Inc. "For current work

the annual index may be kept up to date by a weekly card service which supplies printed cards

with brief abstracts for articles in periodicals,

translations, reports, etc., in various languages." 43 Since October 1962, the Enginering Index, Inc., has issued monthly compilations in book form of

its bibliographic items.

These are but a few examples of earlier periodical indexes, and we shall turn our attention now

to current enterprises. We have mentioned vari- ous listings of scientific and technical reports from

government agencies ; their abstracting and indexing practices are of importance to considerations

attendant upon potential mechanization.

The monthly publication, Bibliography of Agriculture, of the National Agricultural Library an- nounces articles, monographs, serials, and report

literature, most of the reports originating in re- search agencies within the Department of Agriculture. The December issue each year contains the

annual subject and author index, the monthly vol- umes containing only an author index with the

citations to the specific items.

In indexing for the Bibliography of Agriculture, no standard list of headings is followed,

"merely the subject index from the previous year, added to when the need arises. The indexing is usually done from both the title and a glance at the report. Each subject heading is typed on a 3x5 slip of paper along with the citation number

of the document which appears in the announce- ment bulletin. These slips are then filed by subject in a temporary file until early Fall when the

December issue begins cumulation. It is purely a manual system. Each document averages 2 to 3

subject headings." 44 In contrast to the Bibliography of Agriculture,

the production of indexes to current medical liter- ature has been the target for mechanization considerations for some years, and is still undergoing

progressive advancement in the types of equipment used. "The Current List of Medical Literature began publication at the Army Medical

Library in 1941. . . . Dr. Seidell convinced the

Library . . . that the advent of photo-copying

services in libraries called for a weekly index to provide for prompt dissemination of information

concerning articles available on microfilm." 45 There has been a trend "to change from one type of

equipment to another . . . From about 1950 to 1959, the Current List of Medical Literature . . . was typed on individual 3x5 cards which were

laid out in shingle form by hand for photo-offset

publication. In January 1960, Index Medicus was launched as the successor . . . The entries . . . were typed with the paper tape typewriter onto Hollerith card . . . and fed through

the Listomatic camera for photo-offset publica-

« Winchell, 1951 [650], p. 297. "Painter, 1963 [445], pp. 91-92.

45 Rogers and Adams, 1950 [490], p. 279.

tion" 46 and, more recently, the MEDLARS

system involving computer and high-speed photocomposition (GRACE, or Graphic Arts Composing Equipment) has been approaching full operation.47 The history of this progression in systems is of

interest from the point of view of cooperative

long-range planning of information systems and

services. Thus, "... a research contract was

granted to Johns Hopkins University in October,

1948, by the Medical Research and Development

Board Office of the Surgeon General".48 This

Army Medical Library Research Project at the

Welch Medical Library had among its contract

objectives that of exploring "existing and projected methods, emphasizing machine methods,

applicable to such pilot projects as may be neces- sary." 49 The work at the Welch Medical Library

continued for several years, the final report being

issued in 1955. Beginning in 1951, the project

maintained in punched card form the subject heading authority list used for the Current List of

Medical Literature. Garfield has stated that this

work "clearly demonstrated the ease of converting

alphabetic subject heading lists to categorized or

classified lists of terms." 50 Ingenious use was made of a modified IBM 101 machine for the preparation of printed subject indexes.

Next, the Council on Library Resources made a grant to the NLM for an "index mechanization

project" between July 1958 and June 1960. As a

result of the project, the production of the Index

Medicus from January 1960 to the introduction

of GRACE used the Listomatic Camera, IBM card

punching and handling equipment, and the Friden

Justowriter (tape-typewritten with a justified

right hand margin) . Bibliographic citations, au- thor entries, and subject headings were punched

onto paper tape by Justowriters and proofread, the

tape permitting automatic duplication of entries on IBM cards in different formats. Collating and

sorting equipment produced a mechanically se- quenced deck of cards. Proofreading was from a

positive paper print produced by the camera. Following correction the film was processed, and col- umns stripped up for page makeup. The monthly

publications were produced by photo-offset. The

12 monthly decks of cards were interfiled by IBM

equipment to produce the annual Cumulated Index

Medicus of the American Medical Association.

In August 1961, the NLM undertook its MEDLARS project (Medical Literature Analysis and

Retrieval System) by contract with the Information Systems Operation of the General Electric

Co.'s Defense Systems Department. The monthly

48 Gull, 1962 [228],. p. 62.

47 See Scientific Information Notes 6, No. 4, p. 10, 1964 : "The

August 1964 issue of Index Medicus was the first to be produced

by GRACE. It is a 609-page document, containing more than

9.000,000 characters. GRACE processed this quantity of material in approximately 16 hours including set-up, running, and

correction time."

48 Rogers and Adams, 1950 [490], p. 283.

4»Larkey, 1953 [332] and 1956 [331].

co Garfield, 1959 [211], p. 471.

33
Index Medicus, the annual Cumulated Index

Medicus, the annual printings of Medical Subject

Headings, the Bibliography of Medical Reviews,

and recurring bibliographies all continued. The

Graphic Arts Composing Equipment (GRACE)

composes finished copy on film suitable for offset printing. Most demand (nonrecurring) bibliographies and all statistical information prepared by

the system are printed by a standard computer

printer in single font copy on continuous paper or on 3" x 5" card forms.51 Returning now to the more general aspects of the

abstracting and indexing services offered by vari- ous Government agencies, we note first that the

indexes to DDC's TAB were enlarged on 1 January 1965 52 to include personal author, contract,

and corporate author/monitoring agency indexes.

The combination of subject, corporate author/

monitoring agency, personal author, and contract indexes for each TAB is published as a separate

volume but is distributed at or near the same time

as the corresponding TAB announcement bulletin.

A separate cumulated index will be published at the end of each of the first three quarters of the

calendar year. An annual cumulated index will

be issued at the end of the year covering the entire

year's announcements.

The subject index entries are arranged by the

asterisked (weighted) descriptors (most with

modifying descriptors for greater specificity) as- signed to the documents. Each entry is comprised

of (1) a descriptive annotation concerning the

document; (2) the DDC document (AD) number

assigned to the document; and (3) the number of

the subject division in TAB where the complete

announcement appears. It is noted that the DDC

is using a "descriptive annotation" which appears

to bear comparison with the "notation of content"

of the STAR and the combination of main heading

with modifying phrases of NSA.

The Corporate Author/Monitoring Agency

Index to TAB is arranged in alphabetical order of

interfiled corporate authors and monitoring agencies. Within each entry are listed originator re- port number (if present), title (if unclassified),

monitor series number (if present), and AD number and division number.

The Personal Author Index is arranged alphabetically by the last names of the authors of re- ports. Unclassified titles and division numbers

are also given.

The Contract Index is arranged alphanumerically by contract number. Individual entries

contain corporate authors, originator report numbers (if present), monitor series numbers (if pres- ent), AD numbers and division numbers. Letter

abbreviations indicate Final, Annual, or Summary

reports.

The indexes to the VSGRR prior to 1962 had

the subject content indicated by subject headings,

51 Taine, 1964 [5523, p. 119-124.

63 Revision suggested by William A. Barden, private communication, March 30, 1965.

not descriptors, and a separate section for separately announced reports was unnecessary for

either the semiannual index or the individual issue

of the USGRR. Each of the issues for the first half of 1961 had individual indexes for corporate

authors, a practice which was stopped in July 1961

when OTS began receiving the greatest portion

of its copy from DDC. The index for JulyDecember 1961 of the VSGRR has the separate

cumulative index for nonmilitary and older military research reports.

The introduction to the 1962 annual subject

index to AEC's Nuclear Science Abstracts states (page 1) that its main entries are generally specific materials, things, and processes and that these are followed by modifiers describing the properties

of, and processes applied to the main entries. The

modifiers, modifying phrases, or subheadings,

which are "descriptive phrases (modifiers), rather

than ordinary subheadings, are used under the

main headings to give a better indication of the

material covered in an abstract than would be

possible with only a word or two, whenever it appears that such information would be useful."

Compositon of the index to NSA was mechanized

in 1959, involving (1) a composing mechanism,

(2) an accounting machine for sorting, (3) a Listomatic camera, and (4) a developing and drying

mechanism. Coding and post-machine editing

are clerical tasks. Mechanization resulted in a 50 to 75 percent increase in the number of abstracts handled.

More recently, a computer program has been

developed to compile Research and Development

Abstracts of the USAEC (Sherrod, 1963 [522]).

A modification of this program is also used for

author, corporate author, item number and subject

indexes for the Engineering Materials List, which

includes coverage of blueprints and drawings

(Davis, 1963 [156]).

NASA follows two levels of indexing, one for

direct use by consumers in the STAR index, and a second level, of greater depth, for literature searching and bibliographic preparation by the computer

system. For machine retrieval "where greater

depth of indexing and retrieval is optimized by

the machine capacity," the average number of

access points per item is 15 or more.53 The introduction to cumulative index issues

and to the annual subject index of STAR states that each item announced in the abstract section of

the periodical is indexed with an average of five subject terms and that the item is represented in

individual index listings by an abbreviated notation of its content, not the title of the document.

Each "notation of content" is composed of the

principal subjects of the report and appears under

each of the relevant subject terms in the STAR

index. The indexes have three kinds of cross- references: "see," "see also," and "confer." "The

'see' cross-reference is used to relate general con53 Day, 1962 [160], p. 368.

34
cepts, which are too vague to be meaningful index-

'. ing terms, to the more specific terms used in the

i Index. The 'see also' cross-reference refers from

; general to specific terms when the postings from

i the latter are not repeated under the general term. The 'confer' cross-reference relates two conceptui ally associated terms . . ." The introduction con-

• eludes: "As different postings accumulate under

i the subject headings, the headings become the

entry points for the retrieval of relatively broad

classes of information. On the other hand, each

notation of content under a heading may be re- garded as a modifier of that heading which provides the specificity necessary to identify a desired

report. Thus, the user can vary the specificity of

his search by relating the subject heading with

other subjects indicated by the notation of content." Examples of non-Government abstracting-indexing services include Chemical Abstracts Service and Biological Abstracts (BA). Chemical

Abstracts Service, sponsored by the American

Chemical Society, publishes Chemical Abstracts

(OA) and other specialized searching tools such

as Chemical Titles. CA is considered to be the

world's leading abstract-index service in the field of chemistry. Its coverage of the world's litera- ture is extensive, its abstracts are informative in

style and its indexes are specific and detailed. The

number of index terms per abstract averages 3^ 5 the subject headings are general, but subheadings

and modifications make the individual entries

specific. No attempt is made to standardize ter- minology at present, although complete and strict rules are followed for standard nomenclature of

chemical compounds. However, the Chemical

Abstracts Service is undertaking an extensive and

far-reaching program of mechanization in all as- pects of its operations.

BA a world leader hi its own field of biological

sciences, is also undertaking studies of mechanization and, like CA, publishes a machine-compiled

KWIC index, BASIC. We should note that:

"Biological Abstracts, is one of the very few [services] that is completely independent of either a

library or a scientific society. It was established

as an independent, nonprofit cooperative venture

of the world's biologists and incorporated through

the joint efforts of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Union of American

Biological Societies." 54 Chemical Abstracts Service, Biological Abstracts, and several of the Government agencies

which publish abstract-index services are members

of the National Federation of Science Abstracting

and Indexing Services (NFSAIS), mentioned

earlier in section 2.3. R. A. Jensen, Executive Secretary of the NFSAIS, stated in December 1961

that "the Federation is a free-will association of

autonomous and independently managed corpoM U.S. House 1959 [586], p. 99, statement of G. M. Conrad.

rate bodies. In joining together in a Federation

these corporations have merely signified their willingness to cooperate with one another to further

the interests of science and technology. Consequently, the essential autonomy of its member

corporations confines the activities of the Federation to those things which least interfere in or compete with the independence of operation of the

member organizations ....

"The NFSAIS [is] endeavoring to achieve its aims through cooperative efforts in such problem

areas as bibliographic, indexing and abstracting

standards; coverage overlaps and gaps; transliteration ; copyright laws ; definition of terminology

costs and financing; procurement of hard-to-obtain journals; journal inventories; mechanization

in all phases of the operation of secondary-source

information services; and information retrieval

. . . During its formative years, NFSAIS moved

slowly and cautiously in its activities, confining

its tangible work to the preparation of federated

or union lists and the establishment of standards." 55 A steering committee of the NFSAIS gave advice to the Science and Technology Division of the

Library of Congress for NFSAIS Report No. 101,

A Guide to U.S. Indexing and Abstracting /Services in Science and Technology, published in 1960.

Report No. 102 of the NFSAIS, titled A Guide to the World's Abstracting and Indexing Services in

Science and Technology, was prepared under a grant from the National Science Foundation by

the LC Science and Technology Division and published in 1963. This list contains 1855 titles originating in 40 countries ; the entries for the United

States total 365. The 1963 Guide combines and

brings up to date the 1960 NFSAIS Guide and

Index Bibliographicus, 4th ed., Vol. I, Science and

Technology, published in 1959 at the Hague by

the Federation Internationale de Documentation.

The services in the Guide are arranged first by the

UDC classification, and also alphabetically. Recently the NFSAIS "concluded an agreement with

the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China in Peking to exchange some of the

periodicals of its members for approximately forty

Chinese periodicals . . . copies . . . are made available to members of NFSAIS, the Library of Congress, the Linda Hall Library, the Midwest Inter- Library Center, and the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology Library." 56 A National Plan for Science and Abstracting

and Indexing Services, dated March 15, 1963, was

presented to NFSAIS by Robert Heller and Associates. The Plan distinguishes between profession- and project-oriented secondary publications

the former attempt to cover, on a comprehensive

and continuing basis, all significant literature in one or more of the basic fields of science, while

65 Jensen, 1961 [298], pp. 556-557. » O'Brien, 1963 [433], p. 203.

35
the latter provide comprehensive coverage of significant information for a particular subject, with

articles from the literature in any field of science

and technology. "The plan outlines steps by which

the abstracting and indexing services themselves can organize for cooperative effort to meet the

pressing need for improved basic reference tools in all fields of science. They can implement the

plan and still maintain their independence, but

will need the support of their sponsoring organizations, the National Science Foundation and other

government agencies." 57 The Plan has seven major recommendations:

(1) Upgrade the profession-type services with the

assistance of the National Science Foundation.

(2) Establish a central operating unit (Organization X) on a joint-venture basis to utilize the raw

material of the profession-oriented services and

produce new project-type products. (3) Reduce

the cost of the profession-oriented services by co- ordinating journal acquisition and coverage and

by exchanging citations, abstracts, and translations. (4) Use the central operating unit to re- duce the costs of project-oriented services that are already covering the same general segments of

scientific literature. ( 5 ) Increase the use of author

abstracts. (6) Expand the activities of the

NFSAIS. (7) Broaden the membership of the

NFSAIS to achieve adequate representation

among all types of abstracting and indexing services. Jensen has reported that all the recommendation except numbers 2 and 4 were accepted by the

NFSAIS.58 In contrast, perhaps, to the activities of the

NFSAIS, the "progress in achieving better international coordination of scientific abstracting services lias been slow. The program of the Abstracting Board of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), which is supported in part

by the National Science Foundation, has had a modest success. Of more significance for the fu- ture are the program proposals made by the

Foundation to the International Federation for

Documentation (FID) for more active participation jointly with ICSU in the coordination of

such services. . . ." 59 Crowther, reporting in 1958 at ICSI on activities of the International Council of Scientific

Unions Abstracting Board, noted that while there

had been "perennial discussions" on the questions

of adopting a uniform practice or style for details

of abstracts prepared and of unifying the classifi- cation or indexing schemes used, "progress has

been slow." 60 Further: ". . . the most fruitful

activities of the I.C.S.U. Abstracting Board have

been in fields connected with the investigation and

acquisition of material for abstracting . . . ." 61 Agard Evans (1959[8]) has reported that a

"Heller. 1963 [249], p. 27.

68 Jensen, 1963 [299], p. 341.

5!> U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 131, report by B. W. Adkinson.

60 Crowther, 1959 [150], p. 486.

61 Ibid, p. 488.

program for international cooperation in abstract-' ing adopted by the International Council for

Building Documentation in 1950 had, after seven, years experience, generally failed to succeed. The'

working plan involved the publication of abstracts': prepared in each cooperating country which would'

be printed on cards of uniform size and which

would have standardized bibliographic reference

practice and a common classification (modified

UDC). Probable reasons for failure include 1 costs, vested interests, lack of central editing and

questions of marketing and availability.

As an example of a successful cooperative venture, however, we note: "With the exception of a few publications printed in the United Kingdom ... all periodicals carrying original articles on physics and published in: United States,

United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Netherlands,

Belgium, France, and Italy have agreed to publish authors' summaries written according to the

rules approved by the Royal Society and by

UNESCO." Such coojDerative action has definite

implications for the abstracting and indexing

services themselves. In another field progress is also reported : "Some coordination has been

brought about between World Abstracts, Excerpta

Medica, and Biological Abstracts in that tbey

have begun to exchange abstracts." 62 Use of machines in the compilation and preparation of printed indexes, as well as catalogs, an- I nouncement bulletins, bibliographies, and the like,

will, as we have seen, require increased concern

for compatibility and convertibility between sys- || terns. As the use of machines increases, more ma- I terial will be in machine formats and codes, thus

increasing problems of direct use or easy conversion. Attention must be directed to standard

practices in citing and cataloging; use of standj ard journal abbreviations, such as the Coden sys- [ tern (described in section 3.6.1 of this report) ; standard transliteration of foreign names and

titles; establishment of common format for cita- tions; standard practice in citing corporate au- thor sources, and standard methods of ordering

or alphabetizing lists. Until such problems are met and handled in cooperative action, the outputs

from machine processing cannot be used from one

system to another, unless difficult conversion steps are undertaken.

These problems are enhanced by the development of machine systems for production of in- dexes and other lists based on new principles.

Methods are being developed by which libraries

and information centers can prepare listings of

publications in a manner less burdensome than

previously known. From shortly after the close of

World War II onward, new indexing and operating principles began to be developed and applied,

usually to that emergent literature least subject to

traditional types of control, the unpublished tech62 Brownson, 1952 [86], p. 44.

36
nical report. The principal innovations include

"express" information services; the "index-byjournal" system of publications reproducing the

tables of contents of journals of interest to a spet s cific science or profession ; permuted title word in-

(1 dexing; extraction of key words from text, for

| later post-coordination at time of search; and

s assignment of "descriptors," also for post-coordid nation.

Examples of these newer techniques include the

"flash reports" started in 1954 by the Association

of German Electrical Engineers, which are listings

of titles of articles from some 300 periodicals.

I The companies cooperating in the plan each re- ceive a certain number of these periodicals, select from them the articles considered important

enough to go into one large bibliographic listing,

and send the titles back to the association which

,then issues the "flash report." 63 These report

only the titles without any other indication of

subject content and without abstracts. Another example is the "express" or "rapid"

weekly information series of VINITI (the All

Union Institute of Science and Technical Information of the U.S.S.R.), designed to inform its readers of new advances in science and technology,

mainly foreign.64 These "rapid information" re- ports include condensed translations or long abstracts supplemented by photographs, figures, diagrams, and tables of the original articles, and are intended to eliminate the need for seeing the original publication. In 1959 the material was selected

from about 2,100 periodicals and was issued

in some 48 areas of technology, with the intention

to expand in 1960 to some 50 areas. (These publications are not to be confused with the series of

express journals published by International Physical Index, Inc., of New York City, which has been

issuing comprehensive digests of current Russian

literature dealing with topics on automation, elec- tronics, physics, from 1958 onward and on power

since 1961.)

Still another form of "express" information is the quick publication of summary information on a

project, backed by deposit of auxiliary publications (such as extensive tables of data, graphs,

etc.) with a service such as the ADI Auxiliary

Publication Program, mentioned earlier in this

report.

Current Contents, published by the Institute

for Scientific Information, Philadelphia, is one example of the table of contents service ; the Insti- tute publishes collections of contents pages, aimed

at different areas of scientific and technical

specialization.

Looking back toward the earlier predecessors

of current activities we note that : "The success of

Current Contents is a case proving that what one

generation may reject, the next will receive happily. Two publications of the contents-page type,

63 Frank, 1959 [200], p. 497-498. "Mikhailov, 1959 [384], 1962 [385], see also Baker et al„ 1963 [43], p. 155-372.

one in engineering and one in biology, appeared

in the United States in the '30s and foundered after

several issues. The old Current List of Medical

Literature, which made its appearance in 1941,

originally was entirely a contents-page listing.

..." 65 Another table of contents and specialized documentation service is provided to scientific workers by the French Center of Documentation of the Centre National du Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) which reproduces the tables of

contents of the principal journals received and

publishes a "35-mm microfilm monthly review . . . which covers about 300 periodicals." 66 The Smithsonian Catalogue System, approved

by the "First Convention of Librarians," 1853,

involved the listing of titles by means of movable

stereotype plates for each title, each plate showing

"at a glance the heading to which it belongs," and

the plates subsequently assembled for printing in

alphabetical or classed order. At about the same

time, however, Crestadoro in Great Britain was

applying the principle of generating subject matter indexes through title listings based on the

permutation of words in the author's titles—the

first "KWIC" (Keyword-in-context) index

(1856 [149]).

A plan by Lloyd P. Smith for the revision and

indexing of The Philadelphia Library's catalogue

of 1835 and its supplements included the suggestion for perhaps the pioneering KWOC (keywordout-of-context, index) : ''take the most important

word or words of the title, and index it by them,

as well as, in some cases, by some other words more

likely to be referred to as the subject . . ." He

continues: "In a word, my system amounts to a copious multiplication of cross references." 67 A first and obvious use of machines in indexing

processes is in the manipulation of the index entries to produce various orderings of these entries. Machine manipulative operations to sort and to

list entries actually constitute an automatic indexing procedure in the special case where these entries are to each and every different word appearing in the text of the item, as in the making of

concordances. Variations of the basic concord- ance technique are found where the entries are

limited to so-called "significant" words. Typically, in KWIC indexing, the text of the title in

machine-usable form is read into the machine.

The first "word", arbitrarily defined as any se- quence of characters, either alphabetic or numeric, which is preceded by a blank (or space) to the immediate left and is followed by a blank to the immediate right, is then compared to the words

belonging to a prepared list of "stop" words, and,

if a match is found, such a title-text word is eliminated from further processing consideration al- though it is retained for printing on the index en- try line. If no match against the "stop" or

65 Rogers, 1962 [4S9], p. 705.

60 Wyart. 1959 [657],, p. 607.

67 "Proceedings of the Librarians' Convention . . . 1853", 1915

[4t66], p. 52.

208-371—6-6 4 37
"purge" list is found, the word is accepted as an

index entry and is so marked, together with the

surrounding left-hand and right-hand context and

an item identifier out to the length of the line

allowed.

Permuted title word indexing is already a widely

used form of publication and service. Two prominent examples of this type of indexing are Chemical Titles, published by the Chemical Abstracts

Service, and Biological Abstracts Subjects In Context (BASIC) , published by Biological Abstracts.

These two services, designed to provide speedy

"current awareness" of scientific research by filling

the void between primary publication and the appearance of abstracts, are keyword-in-context

(KWIC) indexes produced by modern computers.

There are also several examples of permutedtitle indexes prepared by Federal agencies. The

OTS published, for a little over a year, the experimental publication Keyioords Index to U.S. Government Technical Reports and distributed the in- dex without charge to subscribers to the U.S. Government Research Reports. This index was dif- ferent from the typical keyword-in-context or KWIC index in two ways: (1) The keyword was

out of context, that is, it was separated from the

words normally adjoining it in the title resulting

in the index being called KWOC, or a keywordout-of-context index. (2) The full title, no matter how long, was available immediately following

the keyword.

Thus a typical listing consisted of a title keyword arranged alphabetically in the left-hand

column and paired off with the full title, identification number, and price in the right-hand col- umn. The second part of each of the indexes had

an alphabetical listing by corporate author including also title, personal author, date of publication,

number of pages, contract and report numbers as well as the identification number and price. The

Keyioords Index to U.S. Government Technical

Reports was discontinued in September 1963 be- cause a survey of recipients revealed that a majority of them did not consider it useful enough to pay a subscription fee for its continuance.

NASA's STAR and the complementary Inter- national Aerospace Abstracts of AIAA have machine-compiled indexes based on the KWOC principle. WADEX (Word and Author Index) is a machine-prepared index to Applied Mechanics

Reviews, sponsored by the Air Force Office of

Scientific Research and developed at the computational facilities of the University of Texas.

It has adopted "some features of the KEYWORDS INDEX published by OTS, using the

descriptors 'out-of-context.' " An innovation is the use of the author's names as descriptors so that

the subject and author indexes are intermingled in a single alphabetical ordering.

This principle, of course, dates back at least to the 1870's, when Billings decided that the IndexCatalogue was to be "a combined alphabet of subjects and authors, arranged in dictionary ordei

] under a single alphabet." 68

_ DDC has published two keywords-in-context

title indexes to date, the October 1962 issue foi ASTIA documents not previously announced and

the February 1963 issue for reprints concerning

research of interest to the Department of Defense.]

The first index was made necessary by the increase

in the number of reports received by ASTIA.

This index had three main sections: the KWIC:

index displaying each significant word of the title alphabetically in the center of the column in con

text limited only by column width ; the bibliography with bibliographic descriptions of the re- ports arranged by ASTIA subject division and;

then by ASTIA document numbers within each

division ; and the corporate author index, arranged

alphabetically by name of corporate originator,

giving the subject division and ASTIA document'

number for each report.

The February 1963 listing had the KWIC index

as above; the bibliography containing descriptions!

of the reprints, including the journals where the

articles appear; and an index of personal authors

with references to item numbers in the bibliography. ASTIA did not supply copies of these

reprints to its readers; they were advised to search,!

the appropriate journals for articles of interest. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory of Oak

Ridge, Tennessee, has issued a permuted-title in- dex to the laboratory reports received by the Oak

Ridge National Laboratory Libraries, entitled

Key Word Index to Laboratory Reports Received:

Semiannual Index, January-June 1963.

_ These are a few examples of the many permuted

title word index publications now in operation.

Since such publications are so well established, a study of use patterns is in order. Study groups

need to concentrate on analysis, since many

criticisms center around the quality of permuted

title indexes. Can titles be improved at the

source ? Should authors be required to use titles particularly suited for such indexes ? Or should

the publishers of the indexes improve the titles to

suit? However, the expenditure of too much

intellectual effort at the editing stage would defeat

the purposes of a KWIC index. Some organizations provide standards or guidelines to the authors, and editors then can refine the author's work

as necessary. This area is being given special

attention by the NFSAIS, and cooperative de- j! cisions and actions are expected to be taken.

Another area of NFSAIS activity in this regard : is the work of a committee whose purpose is to study the possibility of merging all member services' permuted title operations. Cooperative ac- \ tion might result, for example, in commonly

exchanged "stop lists" for KWIC indexing (stop

lists signal nonsignificant words to be omitted in permuting and alphabetizing operations) . There

might also be agreement on providing in its proper !

68 Rogers and Adams, 1950 [490], p. 274. 38
place one entry for each word so excluded, to warn

the user of the index list. Such questions, and the formation of working

committees to study them, point to the importance

of providing now for compatibility and convertibility requirements of future systems. Machine

use in the generation of derivative indexes such as KWIC indexes implies requirements for compatibility and convertibility in the development and

adoption of standard practices and procedures.

Examples of these are procedures for single or double look-up; identification of information

what and where is it, which fields have been re- served for it, etc.; use of symbols to indicate

truncation or "wrap around" or inserted extra keywords; line and column formats; conventions

for handling special characters and symbols ; and,

as noted above, stop list listings. Unless cooperative action is taken to provide for standards in

these processes, the products of one system cannot

be used easily by other systems. The result could

be unnecessary duplication of effort both in production and use of such indexes and services.

When cooperative action is taken, results can be

noteworthy. As an example, a form of cooperation between documentation centers involves the

Fisheries Branch of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Italy, and the Aquatic

Sciences Information Retrieval Center (ASIRC)

at the University of Rhode Island. Flexowriters

are used to prepare punched paper-tape versions

of manuscript for the Current Bibliography for

Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries, an international

bibliography issued serially from the FAO headquarters in Rome. The tapes are prepared according to a specified format to facilitate subsequent

computer manipulations of the biliographic entries. Edited paper tapes are forwarded to ASIRC for conversion to punch cards in the

KWIC indexing format. The retrieval center then indexes the material for storage in its litera- ture retrieval file. We have discussed secondary publications, particularly abstracts and indexes and new forms of

indexing services, as tools for the dissemination

of scientific and technical information—as means

for determining availability of information as a prelude to acquiring and processing that information. These same tools will be discussed in further

sections of this report in terms of the analysis of

their content, the storage of and search for them,

and efforts for standardization of their processing,

formats, etc. Here, however, we have concerned

ourselves only with the dissemination factor.

3.4.5. Clearinghouses

Another aspect of dissemination of information

lies with the concept of clearinghouses as sources of

information about the availability of information.

This might mean information about other information, published or otherwise ; about personnel

about current or on-going projects ; about translations, completed or in process; or about various

information services. Quite recently, increased

emphasis has been placed on such service. For example, the Clearinghouse for Federal

Scientific and Technical Information is a central

service for government and industry. Its main

services are (1) supplying copies of technical re- ports resulting from federally sponsored research

and development, (2) supplying copies of translations of foreign technical reports, (3) publishing

a number of semi-monthly announcement bulletins

of the above materials, and (4) literature searching. In the near future it is planned that these

activities will be expanded, and additional services

will be provided when possible.

Similarly, the Department of Agriculture has

extended its services. "To avoid duplication of

effort and to increase the availability of bibliographies, translations, and studies on mechanized

information systems, a clearinghouse was established in the National Agricultural Library

(NAL) last year [1963]. . . . Under the system,

the NAL maintains records of all agricultural

bibliographies or translations being compiled or prepared throughout the United States as well as

all documentation studies or systems. Any re- quester has access to this information, and in re- turn the NAL asks only that copies of completed

bibliographies or translations and information

concerning mechanized information activities be

transmitted to it and made available through its program." 69 The National Referral Center for Science and

Technology is a clearinghouse designed to provide

comprehensive, coordinated access to the nation's resources of scientific and technical information.

Established in the Reference Department of the

Library of Congress, the Center has four major

areas of responsibility: (1) identification of all significant information resources in the fields of

science and technology; (2) acquisition, cataloging, and correlation of data defining the nature,

scope, and capabilities of these resources ; (3) provision of advice and guidance about these resources

to any activity or individual requiring access to them; and (4) determination of the roles and re- lationships that exist or that should exist among

the many facets of the scientific and technical

information complex.

In addition to clearinghouses for information

from particular sources or on specific subjects or about available services, there are clearinghouses

for information from and about a nation or geographic region. Thus, among the functions as- signed to INSDOC, the Indian documentation

center established in 1952, was "to be a channel

through which the scientific work of the nation is made known and available to the rest of the

world." 70

69 L.C. Information Bulletin Vol. 23. No. 38, September 21, 1964, p. 533. TM Parthasarathy, 1962 [448], p. 334.

39
Clearinghouses for research reports and published literature are well-established, but indexes

of research projects have only recently received

the serious consideration they deserve. This is perhaps not surprising but does need correcting

since much valuable information can be gleaned

from review of research proposals and current

projects. "With all the documentation facilities at one's disposal for the open literature and the re- port literature, there are still times when additional information is required, particularly on

research underway." 71 From another point of view, "Those who plan,

coordinate and manage research programs need

to know who is doing or proposes to do what re- search, to what extent, for how long and where.

This knowledge, if promptly available on an upto-date basis, helps to prevent duplication, over- emphasis or serious gaps in subject areas of re- search. It also promotes optimum utilization of

research funds and other resources." 72 The content of proposed and current research can be "as

vital to scientific achievement as are published results, and the mechanism of disseminating the

relevant information as important to systematize.

Project indices thus become a significant element

of science information services." 73 In these "project indices" or information clear- inghouses important facts about pending and ac- tive projects should be registered and made accessible to both administrators and scientists to

facilitate their decisionmaking. For example,

". . . long before projects are completed and the

results reach the stage of publication, knowledge

of their existence and preliminary results are vital to an effective national program of research." 74 In addition, "information could be provided on

the availability of partially used facilities which

could be more effectively employed in or by other

research facilities so as to avoid unnecessary construction or purchase of duplicate facilities. Considering the sharply growing costs of facilities,

and the delays in national programs while awaiting the necessary approval, funding, and procurement of new facilities, more effective utilization of

existing apparatus could be a boon. It may well

be that utilization of research facilities and maintenance of an inventory of their availability would

represent a benefit if not justification of a projectindex " 75 At the present time, no complete inventory exists

of the Federal Government's program in research

and development. "It has been our view that, if the taxpayer's considerable investment in scientific research and development is to yield optimum results, close attention must be paid to the management and dissemination of information on current, as well as completed, research and development." 76

11 Hilsenrath, 1955 [262], p. 108. "U.S. Senate, I960 [592], p. 126.

73 U.S. Senate, 1961 [591], p. 34. "Ibid., p. 3.

75 Ibid, p. 50.

76 H. H. Humphrey, letter of transmittal, U.S. Senate, 1961

[590], p. III.

There have been, however, a number of instances

of project-recording systems within agencies and

with respect to highly specialized subject areas. A number of examples of the latter, such as that

of the Advisory Group on Electron Tubes, are cov- ered in detail in the Senate report on the coordination of such information in the field of elec- tronics (1961 [590]). The report also covers as- pects of the project card or DD-613 and CATE

(Current ARDC Technical Efforts) programs.

The former is referred to as "the foremost single

DOD system of information on research and development . . . This system is the largest such effort of any Federal agency. The system serves several

important uses, including its use . . . for overview

of the total Defense research and development

effort." 77 Plans were made not only for mechanization of the DD 613 files but also for their amalgamation with the regular DDC documentation

services. The CATE program has been "an information

system designed to provide a source for quickly

identifying and locating the scientists and engi- neers working in the technical fields of interest to the Air Force . . ." 78 and to "promote interchange

of technical information among the scientists and

engineers in the Air Research and Development

Command ( ARDC) , its staffs, governmental agencies, industries and universities. . . ." 79 An exemplar for current research project re- porting in specialized subject fields is that for the

field of scientific documentation itself—the series "Current Research and Development in Scientific

Documentation" issued by the National Science

Foundation ([418]).

In project ECHO, Documentation, Inc., operates

for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research the

Experimental Contract Highlight Operation, re- cording facts and figures about current projects

and preparing reports about them on demand.

In the early 1960's, NIH "began publishing an

annual subject index of all its research grants." 80 More recently, a broader scale attack has been

anticipated for the Clearinghouse for Federal

Scientific and Technical Information, in cooperation with the Science Information Exchange, to provide government-wide coordination of project

indexes.

Another approach to the problem of ascertaining research in progress, other than maintenance

of central indexes or clearinghouses, is to conduct

surveys by fields of research. The National Bureau of Standards "has since 1933 compiled an- nually . . . [the] publication called Hydraulic

Research in the United States [which] contains a summary of each active project including: title, sponsor, correspondent, nature of the project, de77 U.S. Senate, 1961 ([590]), p. XXII.

78 U.S. Senate, 1961 ([591]), p. 95.

79 U.S. Senate, 1960 ([592]). p. 11.

80 "Communication Problems in Biomedical Research," 1963

([403]), p. 23.

40
scription, present status, results, and publications." 81 There is one step farther back than information

about initiation of current research projects,

namely, the recognition of specific areas where re- search is needed. In the 1938-1940 survey of "re- search as a national resource (1938 [415]), the

NRC study of research in industry concluded

among other findings that "less restriction should

be placed on information about existence and nature of problems." 82 Such an objective is the goal

of the U.S. Air Force Technical Objective Document (TOD) Eelease Program (1964_ [577]).

These documents outline anticipated requirements

or capabilities of the Air Force implying the need

for research and development efforts. TOD's is- sued in 1964 covered such subjects as flight control,

information displays, and photo materials and

Optronics.

One of the best examples of the index or clear- inghouse concept with respect to on-going research

is the Science Information Exchange of the Smithsonian Institution, formerly called Bio-Sciences

Information Exchange (BSIE). The history of

BSIE may be traced "back to the dissolution of

the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) in 1946, at which time a number of Federal agencies undertook their own support of research in the medical sciences. Information exchanges were established within various

agencies, the largest of which was the Office of Exchange of Information of the Public Health Service. When the amount of research supported by

Federal agencies in the medical field had grown

from $4.3 million in 1946 to $33 million in 1949,

with corresponding growth in number of research

organizations, investigators, and related multiplesubmitted proposals, it became imperative that re- search project information be coordinated. . . ." 83 The Medical Sciences Information Exchange

(MSIE) was then founded as a cooperative venture in July 1950 within the Division of Medical

Sciences, National Research Council. Support and

administrative policy for the MSIE were provided

by the six participating Federal agencies. "This

cooperative effort, together with the voluntary co- operation in the Exchange of many private philanthropic organizations, . . . made possible this

extensive survey of a broad field of research . . . 12,923 research grants registered with the Exchange during the period 1946 to 1951 . . . illus- trates the value of a central clearing house for

information of this type." 84 In the Fall of 1953,

MSIE was shifted to the Smithsonian, its scope ex- panded into the fields of biology and psychology,

and its name changed to BSIE.

Thus the BSIE and its precursor were organized as interagency management and information

81 Hilsenrath. 1955 [2621, p. 109.

82 National Resources Planning Board, 1941 [46], p. 1.

83 U.S. Senate. 1960 [592],, p. 56.

84 Review, unsigned, of Deignan and Miller (1952 [171]), in Amer. Doc. 3.

services, without specific congressional authorization or appropriations, in order "that the various

Government agencies providing support of biological and medical research might have knowledge of both applications received by other agencies and grants and contracts awarded. Upon in- vitation, the major foundations and voluntary

agencies joined hands with these Government

agencies in exchanging this type of information . . . ." 8S The Exchange maintained an index of current

research projects which represented the only co- ordinated single source of such information in the

biological and medical sciences. It was responsible for gathering, organizing, and relating data on unclassified research supported by both Federal and non-Federal agencies. "Since BSIE was

originally organized because of concern by Federal granting agencies over unknowing duplication of support in the biological and medical sci- ences its coverage of federally supported extra- mural research [was] emphasized. Intra-mural

research of some of the participating Federal

agencies [was] gradually and voluntarily . . . added." 86 Research by private organizations such as medical foundations was also voluntarily reported to the Exchange, and individual researchers listed their non-grant-supported work. "The services of

BSIE [were] utilized extensively by granting

agencies to determine the amounts and sources of

support given individuals, institutions, localities,

and types of research as a guide to a balanced program and equitable sponsorship. By this means,

gaps in programs or need for multidiscipline approaches were readily detected . . . Committees

planning symposia and surveys of research [used]

BSIE to find out what is being done, by whom,

and where." 87 In October 1959, the National Science Foundation, which had been contemplating the pros and

cons of a central Federal index in the physical

sciences for some years, reported to the Federal

Council for Science and Technology its intent to establish a physical sciences information exchange.

The question of including physical sciences in

BSIE had been discussed by its governing board

in March 1959 and, "with NSF encouragement,

BSIE and Smithsonian Institution undertook a study during the summer of 1960 of the feasibility

of extending their activities. On September 22,

1960, the Smithsonian founded a Science Information Exchange (SIE) embracing both the exist- ing Biosciences Information Exchange and the

newly conceived Physical Sciences Information

Exchange." 88 By 1963, it was reported that: "The [SIE]

accepts records from all sources that wish to register and endeavors to establish cooperative ar85 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592],, p. 14.

86 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 5455.

87 Ibid. p. 58.

88 U.S. Senate, 1961 [591], p. 4.

41
rangement with all research support organizations

that are interested in contributing information

about their programs. . . . [It] does not duplicate or compete with the established library and

documentation services. Actually it complements

these by covering only the prepublication phase of

the total process. . . . The Exchange features

the development of many different arrays and

compilations of information that are tailored with

each request to meet a specific need of research

management." 89 It is also pointed out that "SIE is several years

ahead of the published information in terms of

giving leads directly to the man who is doing the

research. This is a cooperative Government program in which all of the agencies that are carrying on research and development are cooperating

wholeheartedly at the present time." 90 The Crawford Report suggests that national

and "international professional organizations

should be invited to explore the worldwide phases

of the problems and opportunities of information on work in progress." 91 An example of such a

possibility is the program set up in the Inter- American Institute of Agricultural Sciences with

the aid of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to provide information "on current research

projects by means of a central file of research

projects and a central index to the names of Latin

American research staffs, and a periodical publication for researchers." 92 For the most part,

however, such services to date have been marked

by the following: (1) they have been organized

and maintained primarily by administrative or management rather than research organizational

units; (2) there has been little or no coordination

and correlation between the services offered by the

various project-record keeping activities; and (3)

such services as are available are apparently not

generally known nor widely used.

"There is, as yet (Oct. 1963), little evidence of

the extent to which working scientists use services

such as SIE or the NIH Research Grant Index, or of the potential value of these services for the con- duct of research. A study of these questions

would be helpful in guiding policy with respect to modifying or expanding these kinds of service." 93 A critical requirement is to amalgamate current

research-in-progress reporting with report and

publication announcement responsibilities.

In the early BSIE and in most research grant

systems, subject categorization has to date been

largely limited to administrative and reporting

requirements, rather than to current awareness

search, and while contributing individuals have

requested information about similar on-going re- search, there has been little or no attempt to pro89 Freeman, 1963 [203]i, p. 218.

90 U.S. House, 1963 [582]i. Vol. 1, p. 33-^statement by B. W.

Adkinson.

91 Crawford Report 1962 [465], p. 69. ^Murra, 1962 [402] p. 173.

03 "Communication Problems in Biomedical Research" 1963

[403], p. 23-24.

vide selective reference service, nor to relate cur- rent project information to the current availability

of either unpublished report or published litera- ture. An exception, again exemplary, is that the

Current Research and Development series (National Science Foundation [418]) requests the

listing of pertinent bibliographic items from each

reporting project and that No. 12 of the series,

now in process of preparation for publication, will

be a cumulative bibliography of all references

cited through the reporting date.

3.4.6. Copyright and Translation Problems

Inputs to the total information resources from

many nations and in many different languages

create new and additional problems of cooperatioix

and compatibility. Problems of awareness of

availability, of acquisition, and of avoiding duplication of effort in the area of technical translations assume increasing importance as more and more items of pertinent technical information be- come available from research and development of- forts in many different countries. Specific questions here include the matter of indexes and list- ings of translations both already available and in

process of preparation and the nature and extent of cooperative efforts and exchanges, and aggravated problems of copyright if unauthorized

translations are made whether by man or machine.

"Section 7 [of the British copyright act of 1956]

provides that there is no infringement if a copy

of an article in a periodical publication is made or

supplied by or for a librarian of a library in a

class prescribed, and in accordance with regulations prescribed, by the Board of Trade. Presumably, for purposes of photocopying, an authorized

translation would be treated by those libraries in

the same way as the original, but it is not clear

that an unauthorized translation would be so treated because, legally, it is an infringing copy.

This is an important point that deserves exploration." 94 One opinion about a possible solution has been

expressed thus : "It would seem that we may need some international 'Fair Translation Declaration'

which would permit those having competent translations to offer for general use to act somewhat

along the lines of the Fair Copying Declaration." 95 Reed, however, also points out that

". . . Two copyrights subsist in a translation : the

first is that of the owner of the original, and the

second that of the owner of the translation . . . ." Looking to the general copyright problem we

note that "general international collaboration on

copyright begain with the meeting together at Berne in 1885 of some eleven powers which in- cluded the United Kingdom and seven other European countries; amongst the nonparticipants were Russia, Holland, and the United States. The

result of the meeting was the Berne Convention of

94 Reed, 1960 [475]|, p. 162.

95 Patrick, 1960 [449], p. 135.

42
1887 ... In 1952, a new international group met

in Geneva under the aegis of UNESCO to try to bridge between the Berne powers and others who

could not, or would not, join them (the latter in- cluded the United States and other pan-American

powers but still not Russia) . The meeting agreed

to the Universal Copyright Convention . . . ." 96 Although the copyright problem is real and se- rious, cooperative and collaborative efforts are being carried forward within the framework of

copyright conventions. Thus "The Royal Society

has issued a Fair Copying Declaration, to which

some 131 organizations representing over 190 periodicals have agreed." 97 A new and special problem with respect to copyright is likely to arise as an outcome of the recent

decision involving the copyrighting of computer

programs. "The Copyright Office of the United

States, a department of the Library of Congress,

has taken the position that copyright registration

for computer programs is possible under the pres- ent law." 98 The cooperative and collaborative efforts al- luded to above also face problems, among which

are lack of familiarity with foreign language materials and difficulties in locating specific translations, in determining whether specific translations

have been made, and in reaching agreement on

necesary formats, coverage, etc., to aid free and

full exchange and use of translations.

These several problems have been discussed at various times and by various workers, thus: "In

addition to struggling with the sheer volume of

the literature, the American scientific community

encounters an increasing complication in dealing

with the technical information published in languages other than English. There is a serious lack

of awareness in the United States of the growing

significance of foreign technical publications." 99 This awareness should be fostered because, for

example, according to data compiled by Unesco,

the Soviet Union occupies the first place in the

world in terms of the number of published works,

"providing approximately 20% of the entire world

book output." 100 Also it is claimed that "the language difficulty is reflected in the fact that more

than one-third of the world's scientific and technical literature is produced in the U.S.S.R., China,

and Japan." 101 "If the location of originals, after years of

grinding work by abstracting agencies and collat- ing organizations—and the development of such

tools as the World List of Scientific periodicals—

is becoming less difficult than it was (though, in

all conscience, it is difficult enough) , the location

of translations is still in a most rudimentary

state. . . . Though there are cooperative trans- lating and locating services in restricted fields, and

96 Reed, 1960 [4751. P. 158-160.

97 Brownson 1952 [85], p. 40.

83 Scientific Information Notes 6, 3, 2 (1964). "Stanford Research Institute, 1963 [542], p. 5.

10»Tareev, 1962 [555];, p. 338.

101 U.S. Senate, 1960 [582], p. 127.

at least one location index which aims at comprehensiveness (namely that at Aslib) , there is in fact no swift and sure way of finding out whether a given paper has been translated and how to obtain a copy of the translation. The existing services are too narrow in scope—or, where broad, are too

little used. How can we improve this near-chaotic state of affairs?" 102 Adding to the confusion is the fact that "translations of scientific papers of foreign origin are

similar in nature to reports. If they are reproduced and distributed at all, they appear as separates and present the same cataloging and filing

problems as reports," 103 Further complications arise when, for example,

". . . both national and international scientific organizations and standardization groups have

attempted for over 20 years to create some order

out of the chaos of conflicting cyrillic-alphabet

transliteration systems and to impose some

measure of standardization. Relatively little has

been written on the problem, but numerous committees have been conceived and dissolved, most

of them coming to eventual disagreement over the

claims of transcription as opposed to transliteration." 104 (Transcription gives some approximation to pronunciation ; transliteration is arbitrary

and unambiguous character substitution, according to the SLA Subcommittee on Transliteration.)

Nevertheless, since World War II, translation

activities on an international scale have produced

cover-to-cover translations of periodicals in science

and technology from the U.S.S.R., the People's

Republic of China, and a few other nations.

These translations began as early as 1949

and are made available by various publishers.

Procurement of publications from the People's

Republic of China is receiving the attention of

such organizations as the National Federation of

Science Abstracting and Indexing Services

(NFSAIS) and the Joint Publications Research

Service (JPRS). The JPRS publications, ac- cording to their foreword, are "prepared under

contract ... as a translation or foreign-language

research service to the various federal government

departments." The JPRS provides a centralized

translation service for interested U.S. Government

departments and prevents, where possible, duplication in such work. The JPRS was established

in 1957, with branches in Washington, New York,

and San Francisco, as a component of OTS.

JPRS products can be classed into two broad cate- gories: (1) ad hoc reports, encompassing either cover-to-cover translations (e.g., of many East

European statistical yearbooks) or reports on specific fields of inquiry which utilize a variety of

relevant source material, and (2) serialized re- ports published periodically and offering selected

translations from the East and East Central Euro102 "Technical Translation: Co-operative Action," 1960 [5661.

p. 130.

103 Waterman, 1955 [630]. p. 6. 1M Neiswender, 1962 [421], p. 37.

43
pean press. (Horecky, 1960 [272] Federal

departments having a continuous need for translations of foreign language publications channel the

bulk of material to JPRS. Any component of the

Government may utilize JPRS services through

the intragovernmental purchase order system, and

institutions and individuals may obtain the re- ports through sales outlets. The JPRS accepts

work orders only from government offices and

contracts only with individual translators to per- form services. "A pioneering effort in the field of translating

Japanese technical material has been started by

the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) working in cooperation with the

Institute of Electrical Communication Engineers

of Japan . . . and the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. As a result of the cooperative

effort, approximately 2400 pages a year of Japanese electrical engineering articles will become

available to U.S. scientists and engineers." 105 Technical Translations is a semimonthly sec- ondary publication which has been issued by OTS

since January 2, 1959, in cooperation with the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Translation

Center. The journal lists and abstracts, with

(source and cost, translated technical literature

available from OTS, LC, SLA, cooperating for- eign governments, commercial translators and

publishers, universities and other sources. The

SLA is responsible for collecting translations from

non-Government sources, both domestic and for- eign; the OTS for collecting translations from

both U.S. and foreign government services. The

John Crerar Library in Chicago has responsibility

for administration of the SLA Translation Center.

The current issues of Technical Translations

have four indexes separate from the journal

proper. The indexes are for author, subject, journal of the original article, and number index, tell- ing on which page of the Technical Translations

the translation may be found. Technical Translations became an international journal upon its affiliation with the European Translations Center

(ETC), Delft, the Netherlands, in 1961. The

Center has the duty to "cooperate intensively in

order to make Technical Translations a truly universal journal, with up-to-date contents which reflect as completely as possible the acquisitions of

the large regional centers and of the centers in the

countries which are not yet associated in a regional

center." 106 The European Translations Center itself was

established in late 1960 by the European Productivity Agency, to collect, make known and make

available translations, references, and abstracts

(from Russian and other out-of-the-way languages into a Western language) which are not

obtainable commercially. The aim was to create a single center in Europe where translations, or

105 Scientific Information Notes 5. 3, 2 (1963).

106 Wilson, et al., 1963 [649], p. 53.

information about translations, could be obtained,]

thus relieving European countries of the burden!

of having to build up their own collections. Of

the 30,000 translations available, the largest contributor has been the United States with about

20,000 translations, the remaining being European contributions. The Center regards the OTS

in Washington and the Translations Center of

SLA in Chicago as regional centers for North

America and itself as the center for Europe.

Another cooperative translation activity is the

Transatom Bulletin, published by TRANSATOM, an information office sponsored by EURATOM (the European Atomic Energy Community), the Atomic Energy Commission of the

United States, and the Atomic Energy Authority

of the United Kingdom. TRANSATOM is lo- cated at the EURATOM headquarters in Brussels

where it collects all available data concerning

translations of nuclear literature, particularly

documents originally produced in languages unfamiliar to the Western reader.

Transatom Bulletin provides up-to-date refer

ences of translations, either complete or in preparation. The translations are divided into two sec- tions, translations completed and translations in

preparation; within each section, the references are grouped in broad subject categories, substantially those used in Nuclear Science Abstracts.

The references to the translations are obviously

prepared by a machine technique, probably

punched cards, the "Guide to the Reader" giving

clues to the items of information contained in each

TRANSATOM reference. Issues of the Bulletin

are provided with an author index and an original source index.

To supplement translation pools and services,

listings of foreign language material available are

offered. The Monthly Index of Russian Accessions, covering receipts both by the Library of

Congress and by cooperating libraries, is compiled

by the Library "with support from agencies." 107 Also the East European Accessions Index and the

Southern Asia Accessions List are compiled by LC.

These lists serve to announce available materials

as a possible prelude to translating or searching

for translations.

The. National Science Foundation grants support to the Midwest Inter-Library Center for ac- quisition of foreign scientific periodicals, another

example of cooperative effort in making foreign

technical information available to U.S. research

workers. Unesco's continuing interest is evidenced

by its Committee on Documentation for the Natural Sciences, which "has concentrated a great

deal on the production of multilingual dictionaries. It has also been useful on problems of Russian lit- erature in the natural sciences. It is . . . trying

to take a stand in the copyright position ... and

10 'Mumford, 1959 [400], p. 3.

44
it has given a great deal of thought to the subject

of the use of author-abstracts." 108 In addition, the Cultural Activities Department

of Unesco is publishing an annual Index Translationum which lists book translations. "The regular appearance of the Index Translationum and its constantly increasing size has been one of the en- couraging signs of the growth of collaboration

between nations . . . the 1962 volume—the thirteenth in the present series—lists some thirty-two

thousand translations published in fifty-eight

countries in 1960 . . . and one is impressed by the

efficiency of the co-operating national organizations that have contributed the detail entries." 109 The location index at Aslib referred to earlier is another cooperative activity of interest : "Aslib and

the British Commonwealth Scientific Office (London) are coordinating information on translations

available in the British Commonwealth and an

index is being prepared . . ." 110 However, not all cooperative translation activities are government or professional society-sponsored. Wright (1960) [653]) describes the co- operative scheme for translations in the British

Iron and Steel Industry, where a consortium of

17 companies share in a common service, with the

products available for sale to members and non- members alike. He includes among the prerequisites for a successful scheme the development of a streamlined administration using standard forms

wherever possible, and the issuance of regular and

frequent lists of translations available and those

in process of preparation.

Further thoughts on cooperative schemes for in- dustry were voiced by Readett, as follows: ". . . The cost per organization participating in the co- operative scheme is much more acceptable than if the translating organization had to bear the entire

charge themselves . . . The next advantage to be

gained from a properly organized exchange of

translations is that of rapid availability. . . . "In many fields of research and development in a given industry many translations are produced

by other organizations which may contain certain

information of utility to the specialist, or which

may give him a general picture of a development

which has an indirect bearing on his own work.

Because of the indirectness of the relationship between these papers and his own special interest,

the engineer or scientist would not be able to

justify a firm request for the article to be trans- lated . . . This would seem to be a consideration

which is likely to grow in importance as time goes

on, because of the ever-increasing interaction of

research and development in various branches of

scientific and engineering work." 111 Liebesny (1960 [340]) raises the question of

whether an index to translations should serve as a

tool to finding out what is available in foreign

108 King, 1955 [316], p. 7.

109 Collison, 1962 [130], p. 296. '"BrowBSon, 1952 (85). p. 37.

111 Readett, 1960 [452], p. 156.

language materials on a subject matter basis as well as to answer inquiries on the availability of a

translation of a known foreign language item.

This is a cogent question from the standpoint of

expanding and improving the coverage of existing

services.

3.5. Acquisition and Exchange of Publications

Once the availability of publications, translations, unpublished reports, or data collections has

been determined through any one or any combination of the channels of dissemination just dis- cussed, the library or information center takes

steps to acquire the material or insure access to it. These steps might involve purchase of the items

through well-established ordering procedures,

receipt of material as a gift from an individual or from a fund established for the purpose, acquisition from another library or center on a loan or ex- change basis, or determination of accessibility in a central location or depository from which the

material may be obtained easily as needed.

What to acquire, whether through purchase,

gift, or loan, is a problem of some import but out- side the scope of this report. Suffice it to say, per- haps, that "the first requirement of a [scientific

and technical information] system is to acquire

within the limits of practicality all the documents

of value to scientists and engineers within its area

of responsibility . . . unless this comprehensive

acquisition can be obtained, no engineer or scientist can be sure that the Documentation Center will

have the one document which contains the best in- formation on the subject of his inquiry." 112 The policies that govern acquisition of "all the

documents of value . . ." are varied and diffuse. One comment in this regard is of interest: ". . . Little more than a third of the reference libraries

reporting in the Brookings survey have reduced

their acquisitions policy to some written form, and,

judging from the examples submitted, most of

these statements are of such a general nature as to give the librarian little practical guidance other

than to try and get whatever anyone in the agency

wants." 113 However, we are more concerned here with how

an item is acquired, especially from the point of

view of possible cooperative or coordinated activity. Among the cooperative endeavors in this area, we may cite as examples "the successful interlibrary arrangements made in Nashville, Philadelphia, Denver, Ohio, North Carolina, Pacific

Northwest . . ." 114 and the Bibliographic Center

for Research organized in 1934 with a grant from

the Carnegie Corporation to provide services

among educational institutions and libraries in the

Rocky Mountain region and bordering plains

states, which pointed the way for similar ventures

including the Midwest Inter-Library Center.

"2 Vann, 1963 [606}, p. 221.

113 Evans, 1963 [188], p. 5. "*Clapp, 1947 [113], p. 99.

45
Blegen (1952 [64]) discusses the advantages and

disadvantages of the cooperation resulting in

MILC. If such activity can be applied successfully, problems of acquisition and coverage could

be lessened, if not solved. Thus, "a rationalization

of the fields of concentration among libraries and

the allocation of responsibility in neglected fields would result in more comprehensive and uniform

bibliographic services." 115 This thinking is especially applicable in Federal

Government libraries, according to Evans : "There

should be far greater cooperation between agency

libraries in assigning responsibilities for various

subject fields so as to encompass the total significant output of material from given countries." 116 Further, "cooperative acquisition is nothing new,

but assignment of national responsibility to other

than the three national libraries is just beginning

to be explored." 117 On the other hand, ". . . The extent to which

the cooperative acquisition and sharing of materials may be carried is directly dependent upon the

actual accessibility of such materials. Actual accessibility in turn is dependent upon the mobility

of the book or reproductions of it, the costs and

speed of such mobility, and adequate bibliographic

information concerning the existence, relevance,

and location of the cooperatively acquired

book." 118 To this end, adequate accession lists issued

promptly would be of great service. The use of

mechanized equipment and systems to sort and

reproduce large quantities of information can be

applied advantageously to the process of preparing and producing such listings. Automation in

libraries, as distinct from specialized collections,

has largely been limited to the mechanization of

routine operations such as the reproduction of

card-catalog sets, the sorting and printing of an- nouncement bulletins and listings of holdings or of catalogs. Extension of these processes, on a

cooperative basis, can serve very useful purposes.

Of course, cooperative ventures must take into ac- count questions of compatibility or convertibility.

As Evans suggests, ". . . It would be helpful

for libraries to issue recent accession lists in their areas of specialization. If federal libraries

adopted a fairly uniform format, numbering sys- tem, and subject categories for these lists, they

would prove most useful to governmental and

other libraries."' 119 Use of such accession lists would ease the burden of acquiring material

through interlibrary loans, a popular but sometimes frustrating way of procuring material.

3.5.1. Interlibrary Loans "Loans between libraries are the most familiar

form of collaboration in the information field and

«5 Evans, 1963 [188], p. 23.

118 Ibid, p. 10. "'Shachtman, 1963 [517], p. 258.

118 Fussier, 1951 [207]i, p. 176.

U9 Evans, 1963 [188], p. 24.

the most studied," according to Holloway.120 He

believes that the usual interlibrary loan has not

been as useful as it could be, since the library staff usually proceeds inefficiently: either going from

source to source until successful or exhausted, or applying simultaneously to many sources. "The volume of interlibrary loans, even in such

special situations as the federal agency libraries,

may be generally underestimated. The Brookings

survey found, for example, that 89 of the responding libraries had an average of 45,000 loans in

fiscal year 1959, or about 860 items per week." 121 Such volume is reflected in the growing concern

of librarians which led to the development of a

general loan code. In this code, it is stated that

"Interlibrary loan service is a courtesy and a

privilege, not a right, and is dependent upon the

cooperation of many libraries." 122 Fussier spoke to both of these points, volume and

effectiveness, when he said : "That there is already

cooperative access to much of the nation's resources

is amply demonstrated by the number of interlibrary loan transactions that are now current. Interlibrary loans are becoming a big business and

are an extremely important auxiliary form of access for many research purposes. This should not

obscure certain defects in the present system. The

method of locating materials is often haphazard

and is certainly expensive. Plans for using the

National Union Catalog at the Library of Congress for the clearing of all interlibrary loans have

yet to come to fruition. The general methods and

techniques of borrowing tend to be expensive and

slow. Finally, the burden of expense is not equitably upon the principal beneficiaries of the

service." 123 Another assessment of the situation claims:

"The present informal system of interlibrary loans

is periously close to breakdown . . . ." 124 A special example of collaboration and cooperatio in interlibrary loans is the exchange of copies

via transmission facilities such as facsimile trans- mission links and closed circuit TV. On at least an experimental basis, this has been cooperatively

explored, for example, by the AEC. "Beginning

in 1949, the Commission sponsored the development of prototype equipment by RCA for flatbed

facsimile transmission of research materials, tested

first between AEC facilities in Oak Ridge and

later . . . the Library of Congress, National Insti- tutes of Health, and the Army Medical Library. . . . [and, in 1958, it] cooperated with the

University of Virginia in its research on the utili- zation of closed circuit television between libraries." 125 Use of the Union List, or National Union Catalog, to aid in acquisition via interlibrary loans, has

120 Holloway, 1961 [267], p. 15. Evans, 1963 [188], p. 27-28.

122 "General Interlibrary Loan Code 1952," Coll. and Res. Libs. 13, 350 (1952).

123 Fussier, 1951 [217], p. 179.

121 Communication Problems in Biomedical Research," 1963

[403]i, p. 25.

125 Statement, U.S. Senate, 1960 [592]i, p. 37.

46
not been as extensive as it might be. For one

thing, ". . . the Union List reports only a limited

number of locations, whereas it is sometimes important to know the complete holdings in a limited area. A number of the union catalogs re- ported by librarians in the Brookings survey cover

periodical holdings in particular regions. Perhaps recent technological developments, including

equipment to sort, find, and reproduce mechanically a vast amount of information, may provide a simpler solution to some of these problems. The

matter should be dealt with first on a national basis

before remnants of the task are left for regional

solutions." 126

3.5.2. The Farmington and Other Exchange Plans

An additional means of acquiring material for a collection is through exchange plans or agree- ments. We have considered these in terms of in- ternational cooperative developments ; we shall ex- amine them now as means for acquisition of

materials. These plans involve not only libraries

in the United States but also foreign institutions ; they involve not only many federal agency libraries but also other public or private centers. Some

plans have been fostered by national governments,

others by professional societies, or private enterprise. But all are based on the principle of co- operation to insure as wide and complete coverage

of available publications as possible by as many

and varied libraries as possible.

The Farmington Plan, originated by the Association of Research Libraries a few years after

World War II, was "an experiment in specialization by voluntary agreement among American re- search libraries. Its objective is to make sure that

at least one copy of each new foreign book and

pamphlet that might reasonably be expected to

interest a research worker in the United States

will be acquired by an American library, promptly

listed in the Union Catalogue at the Library of

Congress, and made available by interlibrary loan

or photographic reproduction." 127 The plan has

"repeatedly been cited as one of the most important, most enlightened, and hopeful instances of

library co-operation in the history of American

libraries." 128 The first acquisitions of books

through the Farmington Plan were for works published in 1948. By 1957 the Association of Research Libraries reexamined the plan in the light

of the experience of ten years and in its survey

(January 1959) concluded that the Association

should not only continue the plan but should ex- tend it world-wide.

It is traditional that individual scientists, sci- entific societies, scientific libraries, and institutions

in the United States have served as agents for the

international exchange of information. Since

1948, the major research libraries of the country

have been able under the Farmington Plan "to ob1:8 Evans, 1963 [188], p. 23-24. ^"Gibb, 1960 [215], p. 1, see also p. 13-14 of this report. ""Talmadge, 1958 [554], p. 375-383.

tain maximum coverage on a worldwide basis of

books and pamphlets of research interest. Participating libraries have agreed to accept responsibility, based on subject and country allocations,

for the procurement of at least one copy of signifi- cant research literature. However, the Farmington Plan was originally aimed at liberal arts materials and is weak in science and the production

from the Slavic areas." 129 Criticism of the plan points out that "The

Farmington Plan . . . has certain obvious defects

it has brought in some material of less than first rate quality; it has omitted some material having

that attribute ; it overlooks many categories of publication, including serials and government publications ; it is not world-wide." 130 Another opinion of the operation was expressed

thus: ". . . Most participants in the Farmington

Plan will agree that it is not perfect, but it constitutes a remarkable development in bringing

books from abroad to these shores." 131 The plan has been evaluated more objectively by

comparing it with the LC Union Catalog Division's Select List of Unlocated Research Books,

which is a selection of the books needed by re- search workers in the United States not found in

the 64 leading reference libraries that check the

Union Catalog Division's Weekly List of Unlocated Research Books. The Select List was used

to determine the extent to which the plan had re- duced the amount of needed research material.

Even though there still was some material not

available in the United States, it was concluded

the plan had been working effectively (Cook, 1954

[135]).

A more somber assessment, perhaps, of the effect of the plan was given by Fussier when he said, "At

present, substantial though certain aspects of co- operation are, it has not greatly affected our operations. The Farmington Plan has perhaps made

the greatest step in this direction, but important

as it is, it has not yet seriously affected the acquisitions or resources of most libraries. There is in

fact no reason why it should. We shall not see major consequences or derive significant advantages from cooperation until our interrelationships

generally make us interdependent." 132 Evans speaking to the same point, pleads the

urgent need for a Federal Agency Farmington

Plan, or the equivalent, noting that "while there

is considerable cooperation between certain federal libraries, much more is called for in allocating

the major areas of responsibility for acquisitions,

particularly of foreign publications. High priority should be given to extending the Farmington

Plan within the network of federal libraries, and

to expanding its scope to countries where it does

not now operate." 133

TM> U.S. House, 1959 [588]/, p. 5.

130 Council on Library Resources, 1958 [140], p. 27.

131 Fall, 1954 [192], p. 105.

132 Fussier. 1951 [207], p. 176.

133 Evans, 1963 [188], p. 48.

47
One instance of this type of activity is "... a central clearinghouse for information and advice on

foreign exchanges established in 1954 in the National Agricultural Library . . . information con- cerning exchange has flowed in a two-way direction—to land-grant college libraries, agricultural

experiment stations and extension services, and in

the opposite direction to foreign institutions." 134 Evans further points out the importance of ex- change agreements in building up collections : "A

view broader than that of a single library can be

achieved only when libraries cooperate, utilizing

the publications of other agencies for exchanges to enrich their own collections. Much has been done

in this regard [he cites the National Library of

Medicine and National Agriculture Library col- lections built to pre-eminence despite "long periods

of parsimonious appropriations"], but more re- mains to be done to promote wider exchanges of

government documents by agency libraries." 13S To sum up these facts and opinions, we might

say that exchange plans are generally successful

and participating cooperating libraries have

gained much through their operation. But such

plans are not perfect in themselves and often they

are not used to full advantage by those in a position to cooperate with them and benefit from them.

The Farmington Plan is the best known and most

extensive of those in operation; however, others

exist in the United States and abroad, contributing to the improvement of cooperation among in- formation s.ystems.

The American Book Center, established for the

exchange of publications, was sponsored by several

library associations and owed "its initial financing

to the Rockefeller Foundation." 136 The Center's

successor is the private nonprofit organization, the

United States Book Exchange, Inc. Its purpose

is "to serve as a center for the exchange of duplicates of books and periodicals having potential

value for research . . ." 137 Although the Exchange offered promise for the increase of ex- changes of scientific publications, it is claimed

that, unfortunately, it "has been used but moderately through the decade." 138 One way perhaps to increase the use of exchange

plans and thereby increase cooperation among

libraries is to centralize the processing of the steps

necessary to effect the exchanges. Thus Evans

suggests that "arrangements might well be worked

out to expand the Smithsonian Institution's ex- changes and to utilize the services of State Department publications procurement officers. Computers could be used to prepare multiple copies

of orders, and to centralize communications, dis- bursement, and a wide range of procurement operations. The entire area of acquisitions offers a

fruitful field for the expansion of interlibraryi

cooperation." 139 Establishing connecting links between different 1 documentation centers and/or general documentation centers, e.g., as a prelude to exchange agree- ments, was "attacked first, I believe, by France:

in 1939 with the creation of the Documentation

Center of the National Center for Scientific Research . . . Further, an experiment sponsored by

the French Government . . . (aims to) gain ex- perience in establishing centers to facilitate th©

exchange of scientific and technical information

and personnel between France and other nations.

The first of these was created a few months ago for

relations with Italy.""0 In addition, DOCA

(Section Documentaire Automatique, Centre

Europeen de Traitement de Plnformation Scientifique, EURATOM) is "building up a European Documentation Network for the exchange of

information. This network includes the Gmelin

Institute, Hoffman-La Roche, Sandoz, Saclay,

Shell (BIPM), the Max-Plank-Gesellschaft and

the FID." 141 The British Central Lending Library for Sci- ence and Technology and the Microfilm Service of

the French Center for Scientific Research are, like

the Farmington Plan, seeking a "balance between

bibliographical control and supply of actual documents." 142 In addition, the Unesco Clearinghouse

for Publications, mentioned in section 2.4., promotes systematic exchanges between libraries

wanting particular publications.

"At a conference held recently in Oslo, Norway,

chief librarians representing the national libraries

of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden signed an agreement on the distribution of scientific literature purchases among the main libraries of i their countries.

"This pact, similar to the American Farmington Plan, is the first international agreement of

its kind . . . ." 143 A guide to international exchanges is the third

edition of the Handbook of the International Exchange of Publications, published by Unesco in

1963. Account is taken of different types of ex- change, transport and customs problems ; in addition, exchange offers of international intergovernmental or nongovernmental organizations and

national bodies are given, with a select list of cur- rent international directories.

Other sources of information about exchanges

may be noted : "A list of the official exchange centers for these countries (of Eastern Europe) may

be found in the National Science Foundation publication NSF 62^9, 'A guide to the Scientific and

Technical Literature of Eastern Europe' ... In- formation on the availability of publications may

be found in the 'Guide to Latin American

134 Shachtman. 19(33 [517], p. 258 135 Evans, 1963 T188]-. p. 6.

136 Ludineton, 1954 [351], p. 200

"'Council

138 on Library Resources, 1958 [1401, p

U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 131.

22.

139 Evans, 1963 [18S], p. 48.

140 de Grolier, 1958 [169], p. 278 279

141 Koelewvn, 1962 [322]. p 45

142 de Grolier, 1958 [1691. p. 279.

143 Science Information News 1, 5, 9 (1959). 48
ijj Scientific and Technical Periodicals—an Annotated List', published by the Pan American

Union . . . ." 144

3.5.3. Photoduplication Services Another means for acquisition, besides interlibrary loans and exchange agreements, is photoduplication of the material in question, either as a central processing operation or carried out at an individual institution. This photoduplication

service may be applied to individual articles from

technical journals thus serving to decrease the

number of journal loans, to bound volumes, or to

single technical reports in one or more copies, a more recent development.

"The photoduplication service was established

in the Library [of Congress] on a revolving-fund

basis, through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1938, in order to provide means for re- searchers and others to secure photocopies of materials in the Library's collections which might

otherwise not be available, and to provide this

service at an economical level. . . . "During 1959 the photoduplication service produced 1,317,915 electrostatic prints; 4,940,419 negative microfilm exposures; and 790,910 feet of

positive microfilm. Of these reproductions, a substantial portion was made for industrial libraries,

research laboratories, and government agencies;

the material, in the main, was scientific and technical in nature." 145 The photoduplication service draws extensively

upon several large collections of technical reports

deposited with it, and "acts in a custodial as well

as in a photocopying capacity.

"Prominent among such custodial holdings are the deposits of the Publication Board Reports

Unit . . . Documents and journals deposited with

the Photoduplication Service by the American

Documentation Institute . . . reports ... of the

Technical Oil Mission . . . microfilm copies of

various Russian scientific and technical journals . . . ," 146 The National Agricultural Library has, since

1911, made photographic copies of articles in its collection as a means of disseminating scientific information. Two experimental projects in photocopying were carried out : a cooperative program

in 1934 with the American Documentation Insti- tute (as mentioned in sec. 2.3) which was later transferred to the Library of Congress ; and a project carried on from 1946 to 1956 as a "joint ar- rangement with the American Chemical Society

to provide copies of all articles which were listed in 'Chemical Abstracts'." 147 The Photoduplication Service of the National

Library of Medicine (NLM) " began rather informally in 1937 when Dr. Seidell provided the Library with a microfilm camera . . . the weekly

144 O'Brien. 1963 [433], p. 203.

146 U.S. Senate. 1960 [592] , p. 89-90.

*« Holmes, 1955 [269], p. 50-51.

147 U.S. Senate. 1960 [592], p. 146.

Current List of Medical Literature was started in

1941 by Dr. Seidell, and through it, readers are kept informed of material available for film- ing." 148 In 1943, the Library began free distribution of microfilms specifically as a substitution for

loan services." This free (photoduplication) service was to be provided in place of lending the

books or periodicals. It represented an extremely

interesting development in library economy.

The theory behind the move was expressed in a statement issued on September 1, 1943 : "The Library recognized that microfilm copying is a service which publicly supported reference libraries

may well perform on an equal basis with that provided for readers and by interlibrary loans. In

the pursuance of such a policy, microfilms will be

sent without charge in lieu of the loan of books to those who prefer them or where books or journals

cannot be loaned." 149 Yet this commendable service is threatened. "At

the current rate of increase in requests to NLM for

photocopy loans, the full capacity of its present

equipment will be reached by the end of 1964.

NLM studies have indicated that major increases

in capacity cannot be achieved without a major

design and development program that would cost at least $3 million." 150 In its annual report for fiscal year 1963, the

National Library of Medicine stated : "The highcost demand systems such as the present NLM

interlibrary loan photocopy operation, operating

as a single centralized national service, cannot

supply the needs of all researchers and clinicians

with promptness and efficiency. The real answer

lies in expansion of local and regional resources." Another Federal agency active in microreproduction is "the NASA Scientific and Technical

Information Facility which went into full production of microforms in July 1962, producing over

800,000 individual microforms representing approximately 10,000 titles in the remainder of that

year." 151 An example of a foreign organization which

maintains photocopy services is VINITI, which

reports: "Another important facility enjoyed by

our scientists, engineers, and technicians is the Institute's photo and microfilm copying service

which supplies the former with copies of any original article covered by the Abstracts Journal." 152 The extent of coverage implied here is admirable,

and a goal much sought by other information

services. "In view of the increasing use of microreproduction methods in libraries and other institutions, the

UNESCO Division of Libraries, Documentation

and Archives has compiled a short provisional list of micropublishers." 153 "Also, "The . . . FID

148 Metcalf et al, 1944 [380], p. 37.

149 Ibid, p. 37-38.

150 Orr and Pines, 1964 [441], p. 1163.

151 Bralove, 1963 [75],. p. 78.

152 Mikhailov. 1959 [384], p. 516.

153 "List of Micropublishers", UNESCO Bull. Libs. XVI, 198-205

(1962).

49
. . . has just published the third and revised edition of Photocopies from Abroad, a directory of

. . . services in 38 countries. Reproduction services listed were collected during a 1962 survey with

the help of national members of FID, with entries

being selected according to their ability and will- ingness to serve customers abroad. More than 150

separate services are described. . . ." 154 On the subject of photocopying, Evans points

out that it and the provision of microfilm and

other forms of microcopying could well be insti- tuted or expanded by many reference libraries. "Only 55 of the 212 reference libraries reported

a photocopying service, and in the majority of

these, it is designed solely for the use of agency

personnel and is not normally extended to other

readers; 92 libraries indicated that they had one

or more reading machines for microfilm or other

microforms. Maximum use of such services can- not take place until the interests of copyright owners have been reconciled with those of readers." 155 Another opinion was : "Photocopying must come

of age, and an organized national plan for copying projects should be established ... a report pre- pared for the American Council of Learned Societies . . . recommends establishment at the earliest

opportunity of a national committee on the photocopying of foreign manuscript and archival material. Other recommendations call for the establishment of a national center abroad to coordinate

projects engaged in copying foreign archival

records and manuscripts, development of copying

priorities in its field by each learned society, care- ful examination of copying proposals submitted

to foundations, and a microfilm clearinghouse

which among other responsibilities can insure adequate recording and cataloging of material

copied." 156

3.5.4. Depository Libraries We have now reviewed interlibrary loans, ex- change agreements, and photoduplication as means

for cooperative acquisition of or access to scientific and technical information. Still another form of

cooperative venture is the depository library, a system whereby collections of material are placed

in a number of libraries, usually scattered geographically but bound by ties to the central office which distributes the material. This placing and

distributing can in itself be a cooperative activity,

carried out by a group of libraries which maintain a central depository for material to be shared.

This latter arrangement offers a particular li- brary "a net reduction in the number of volumes

it must retain for immediate access at the same

time that it yields a net addition to the total re- sources of that library for deferred access. The

overall gains may thus be of striking importance.

154 Scientific Information Notes 5, 3, 12 (1963).

155 Evans, 1963 [188], p. 28-29. See also p. 44ff and 99 of this report.

166 Scientific Information Notes 6, 4, 3 (1964).

The new Midwest Inter-Library Center has been

planned by a group of middle western university i libraries to achieve exactly these goals as well as other kinds of cooperative access to materials." 157

1 Two examples of depository libraries estab

lished by Federal agencies are those of the Atomic I Energy Commission and of the Clearinghouse for ] Federal Scientific and Technical Information

(formerly OTS).

"In addition to providing information products

and services to its own laboratories and those of

other government agencies and their contractors, i the AEC provides complete collections of AEC

unclassified research and development materials

to 84 domestic depository libraries and 83 deposi

tory library collections in 58 countries outside of

the United States. . . . (The collections include) over 28,000 reports, some in microcard form and some in full-size copy . . . [and] a microreader." 158 A few years ago, ". . . On the initiative and

with the support of the National Science Foundation," 159 OTS tried out a national depository li- brary arrangement whereby microfilm reels of Defense, AEC, and NASA reports were deposited in I 12 research libraries geographically distributed

around the nation. Low usage, however, has ap- ! parently discouraged continuance by the Clearinghouse.

NASA, however, has "established an unusual

search tape system that provides up-to-date, comprehensive search capabilities at individual re- search centers of the entire NASA report collec- tion. The collection covers not only the documents

announced in Scientific and Technical Aerospace

Reports, but also the journal literature announced

in International Aerospace Abstracts. Currently 1 the search tapes are in use at six NASA research

centers, eight principal contractors, three university centers, and at NASA's Scientific and Techni- \ cal Information Facility where the tapes are ini- tially prepared . . . Microfiche copies of all new

reports are distributed to each organization in the

search tape program. Each group is thereby enj tirely self-sufficient in that microfiche or hard copy

can be supplied directly upon request." 160 On the international scene, there have been rec- ommendations ". . . To institute regional depots

under international coordination to store complete

experimental records and other documentation in

support of brief published papers 161

3.5.5. Cooperative Exchange of Data We might mention briefly a specialized form of

cooperative acquisition and exchange, that of new

information and data rather than of publications.

Two examples will help to define this new form

1OT Fussier, 1955 [207], p. 178.

15S U.S. Senate, 1960 [592]. p. 36, 48.

159 Green. 1963 [225], p. 224.

100 Scientific Information Notes, 6, 3. 11 (1964).

101 "International Cooperation in Pure and Applied Science," 1961 [133], p. 989-990.

50
and to demonstrate why it belongs with other types

of acquisition and exchange programs.

The New Drug Information project (NDI) is an experiment among pharmaceutical companies

(seven companies in the Fall of 1961) in the ex- change of information on biological properties of new chemical compounds, as reported in the cur- rent literature. This project was designed "to provide an alerting service for the scientists of each

firm that would be more comprehensive than any

one company could provide without greatly in- creased costs." 162 The three military services have agreed on a program "for the interchange of data resulting from

tests of ballistic missile components and parts . . . Reports of tests conducted by any ballistic missile contractor will be reported to the 'IDEP Data

Distribution Center' of the cognizant service. . . . The microfilms of the complete report . . . plus a summary card . . . will automatically be distri- buted to all participating contractors and agencies

which have previously expressed an interest in

that particular subject." 163 It may be that these two data exchange programs

forecast increasing cooperative activity in the

earlier stages of research and development programs. Other examples are the Industrial Liaison

Office, the Cancer Chemotherapy National Service

Center, and the newly established National Standard Reference Data System.

"The Industrial Liaison Office (ILO) was established by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps to

solicit from industry data, loiow-how, and ideas to enhance the Corps' research and development efforts. Information obtained through this program has provided leads to the solution of some

of the most urgent problems and has prevented

duplication by the Chemical Corps of costly re- search already completed in industrial laboratories but which has not been publicly reported.

"More than 90% of the information sent to the

ILO consists of proprietary lists of recently prepared compounds with attached physical, chemical, and biological screening data. At the present

time, lists containing approximately 1000 struc- tures are received each month. . . . Naturally, the

ILO will not release the data to other groups without the written approval of the company submitting the original sample." 164 "As a part of the cancer chemotherapy program,

laboratries across the nation daily compile and

send in test reports on drug effects on animal

tumors. The data is then processed by computer,

providing rapid results on the test compounds for

immediate use by NIH, test drug suppliers, and

the laboratories ... A master file of more than

200,000 chemical compounds and natural products

screened in 26 different cancer systems has been

made available to researchers." 165

162 Bohr and Owen, 1963 [67], p. 201.

163 Burnett, 1960 [88], p. 31.

164 Gelberg et al, 1962 [212], p. 7.

165 Scientific Information Notes, 6, 2 (1964).

"A National Standard Reference Data System

has been established by the Federal Council for

Science and Technology and responsibility for its administration has been assigned to the National

Bureau of Standards . . . The system will provide

critically evaluated data in the physical sciences on a national basis, centralizing a large part of the

present data-compiling activities of a number of

Government agencies . . . ." 166

3.6. Analysis and Identification

After the existence and availability of documents have been determined and they have been

acquired by some means or other, they must be

processed before being put away for later refer- ence. This processing consists of analysis of the

form and content of the documents, plus identifi- cation and recording of the results of such analysis.

We shall discuss these various aspects in turn:

physical identification, content identification, and

cataloging rules and principles devised to aid

these identification operations.

We shall also examine current operations and

proposed activities for cooperative or centralized

cataloging and for the use of automatic equipment

in conventional processing steps and in the newer

approaches to cataloging and indexing.

3.6.1. Physical Identification—Descriptive Cataloging

The physical description of a document is the

most basic of the operations taking place in a li- brary or information center; before the organization can attempt to handle a document, it must

know what it has. In this section we will discuss

the more important elements of a descriptive cata- loging entry, particularly as applied to technical

reports. In the section on cataloging rules,

(3.6.4) early efforts in the development of com- mon practices among libraries will be reviewed,

particularly the origin and growth of standards

for a library catalog.

The problems and difficulties of descriptive cata- loging assume special significance in terms of fu- ture mechanization. For one reason, the rules

involve so many complicated alternatives that they

have to date defied the programmer's ingenuity.

For another, it is precisely the card catalog operation that has received the greatest attention with

respect to the possible introduction of machine

handling in very large systems.

Descriptive cataloging is defined by Webster's

New International Dictionary, Third Edition, as "a library procedure by which a book or other item

is identified and described by recording such items

as author, title, imprint, and collation—contrasted

with subject cataloging." Taube comments that

descriptive cataloging is not the "relatively simple

and straight-forward affair" that it might seem,

that there is difficulty in "devising uniform entries

from the haphazard information which appears on

100 Scientific Information Notes 5, 4, 1 (1963).

31
the title-pages of the various publications and re- ports requiring organization." 167 Although, in the opinion of one author, "It is understood that descriptive cataloging is standardized. Consequently, there should be little difficulty in creating a standard for descriptive

cataloging," 168 many workers in the field would

not agree. For example, "the prevailing rules of cataloging

are based on the Anglo-American rules of 1908.

These have frequently been amended since that

time, however, and as a result have become so complicated and difficult of interpretation that the

value of the code has in good part been

diminished . . . ." 169 Further, "one of the favorite demonstrations of

those who run the National Union Catalog at the

Library of Congress is to hold up 10 catalog cards

from the major libraries of this country, all repre- senting the same book, and all beginning with a

different main entry ; and this despite the fact that

all 10 of these libraries were attempting to interpret the same set of rules !" 170 Much discussion and even argument has gone on and continues about rules for descriptive cataloging. It could be a most fruitful area of cooperation and collaboration, but agreement is difficult to

attain. We might add here that many workers in

automatic system design claim that descriptive

cataloging is more difficult for a computer to ac- complish than automatic indexing or abstracting.

The difficulties will become apparent as we discuss

the individual problems.

The traditional means for bibliographic control

of a book or a publication has been citation of the

author. Items within periodicals are generally

referred to by the personal authors of those items.

Even those libraries that do not have a common

dictionary catalog containing an alphabetical ar- rangement of cards indicating authorship and subject matter of publications usually have separate

catalogs for authors and for subjects.

With the advent of the technical report in this

country, the problems of identifying the organization sponsoring the research or the investigation

assumed increased importance, especially where

no personal author was identified or where many

different authors prepared various reports on the same projects. In the AEC, for example, use of

the personal author entry led to some confusion

"because the reports were produced by a team of

research workers . . . When work is performed

in this manner, it is not unusual for the first paper

to be prepared by one or two members of the team,

the second by a different pair and the third by the

team as a whole." 171 Uniform identification of corporate source has

been a perennial problem, in view of frequent

*<"Taube, 1950 [556], p. 3.

50S Langenbeck. 1962 [3291, p. 298.

169 Scientific Information Notes 4, 5, 3 (1962).

170 Brandhorst. 1964 [76], P- 43.

171 Croxton, 1955 [151], p. 126.

changes of name, which may require the mainte- nance of separate history files (Mac Donald, 1953

[364] ) . But for the technical report the organization must often be regarded as the main entity

for entry into the catalog. This involves the use

of the corporate author for announcement, cata- loging, and filing purposes. The personal author

is considered of secondary importance. "Although

personal authorship is important, the actual identification of a report must be tied to the corporate

agency responsible for the work." 172 Current methods used for designation of cor- porate authors are complex and difficult to fol- low. This is partly because ". . . Laboratories

place their names on a given series of reports with

considerable inconsistency and . . . many laboratory names are homonymous and undistinctive." 173 One solution to the complex problem was offered

by Taube, who suggested that wherever possible

"the most specific corporate body involved was to be employed. Treatment of the most specific body

as a subdivision of its parent body was to occur only when it had a name which was capable, and

likely, of being a subdivision under many other

corporate bodies. Names falling into this category were not defined in a general way, but were specifically promulgated in a list." 174 Another approach to solution was undertaken in

1951 when the Board on Cataloging Policy and

Research of the ALA Division of Cataloging and

Classification "initiated a study of the second edition of the Code by Seymour Lubetzky, with particular attention to the rules for corporate authors

and a discussion of the objectives and principles

which should underlie a possible revision. This

study was published in 1953 as Cataloging Rules

and Principles . . . "Mr. Lubetzky pointed out a number of in- stances of poor arrangement of rules, cases of in- consistent treatment of similar conditions in different sections of the code, and examples of

unnecessary repetition of rules. He gave particular attention to the rules for corporate headings

and showed how these had developed into the pres- ent confused sections on societies, institutions, and

miscellaneous bodies." 175 The complexity of the methods used for designation of corporate author is shown by the rules

devised by Lubetzky in an unfinished draft for a new edition of cataloging rules prepared for the

ALA Cataloging Code Revision Committee (1960

[349] ) . He divides the works of corporate authorship into the following types and gives a rule for

establishing the entry in each instance: work of

corporate body; work of division of corporate

body; work of group organized or sponsored by

corporate body ; work of unnamed group ; work of

individual that is issued by a corporate body.

"2 Warheit, 1952 [627], p. 105.

173 Brandhorst, 1964 [7«], p. 42.

174 Ibid., p. 37.

175 Wright, 1956 [655], p. 331.

52
Government publications may have the following

additional rules : work of national or local jurisdiction; work of jurisdiction subject to authority

of another jurisdiction; work of government department, office or agency; work of government

officials. The DDC has compiled and revised its Corporate Author List, the most recent list being is- sued in April 1963. The ASTIA Guidelines for

Cataloging and Abstracting establish the policy

of the Center regarding the List stating that "the

corporate author (corporate body directly responsible for preparing a document) is treated as the

main entry for each accession cataloged into the

DDC collection, and except for the accession number, represents the principal approach to individual holdings."

The AEC also has a list of corporate author entries. The list currently available is Corporate

Author Entries Used by the Division of Technical

Information in Cataloging Reports, publication

number TID-5059 (5th Rev.), issued in March

1962. It has an appendix listing the rules for cor- porate entry of the AEC, the main principle being

"Scientific and technical reports are to be entered

under a corporate form of entry in addition to entry under the personal names of the authors.

The corporate entry is to be based on the name of

the issuing body current at the time of publication

which is experimentally (or technically), editorially and/or contractually responsible for the re- ports."

In more detail, the AEC, instead of treating all corporate bodies alike, defines several categories

of organizations (eight, to be exact ) and makes the

old distinction between societies and institutions,

developing different rules for each category. In

addition, AEC demands research beyond the document in hand, so that Ladd Observatory is entered

Brown Univ., Providence, Ladd Observatory, but

Lick Observatory is entered Lick Observatory, Mt.

Hamilton, Calif., rather than under its parent, the

University of California.176 NASA has made several listings of its corporate

authors, with codes assigned to each one. Such

lists are apparently not intended for widespread

distribution, probably because of the belief that

there is no need for them outside NASA.

A group of government representatives, comprising a modern-day group for the standardization of information services and calling itself the

Joint Descriptive Cataloging Group, held meetings in April, June, and September 1963. It proposed to advise the Committee on Scientific Information (now COSATI) of its recommendations

as to procedures which could lead to standardization of descriptive cataloging by the producers and

distributors of government research reports. A

Standard for Descriptive Cataloging of Technical

Reports (1963 [195]) was published in December

1963 by COSI. The rules for corporate author

entries in the Standard were included "in the hope

that fruitful discussion of the degree of specificity

will be obtained regardless of agreement on the

order in which the chosen heading is written. It

is planned that a working group representing con- cerned agencies will undertake the preparation of a combined corporate author heading list." A special case with respect to main entry cata- loging and an extension of the problems of proper

determination of corporate authorship has been

raised by Gull. He proposes that rules be drafted

for entry and descriptive cataloging for auto- matic authorship, or nonhuman authorship. He

points out that "electronic and mechanical devices are already producing mathematical and

technical texts (excluding belles-lettres) to which

cataloguers can attribute neither personal nor

corporate nor anonymous (i.e., personal but unidentified) authorship", and contends that rules

must be developed to care for "all works and rec- ords of personal, corporate and anonymous authorship susceptible to electronic and automatic equipment." 177 The sum of all these problems and suggested

solutions to the author citation question point to

". . . the eventual need for a Directory of U.S.

Corporate Authors in the Scientific and Technical

Area ... It would serve as a massive influence

toward standardizing cataloging practices and

reducing cataloging costs throughout the special

library and science-technology information center

field. It would be an instrument by which the

relationship between existing practices could be

displayed to facilitate choice, conversion, etc." 178 Even if the questions of content and order

within author and corporate author entries can be

resolved, an additional problem remains as to the

form of the entry, whether it follows the traditional library practice of main organization with

subdivisions following or whether it uses the

smallest significant component. There are drawbacks to both forms, but either system can be made

to work "by the generous and judicious use of ref- erences. It really makes no major difference

which form is used as long as you decide on one and stick to it. In either case an authority book

or listing of the names accepted is essential." 179 Many efforts have been made to formulate rules

and standards for descriptive cataloging. For 50

years every international library conference has

expressed interest in bringing about agreement on

such rules. One of the major roadblocks to ex- tensive agreement has always been the conflict

between two major cataloging traditions in the

matter of corporate authorship. The European

tradition, taking its lead from the so-called Prussian Instructions, does not recognize the principle

of corporate authorship, and prefers to enter works under their title or personal author. The

176 See Brandhorst, 1964 [76K p. 39.

«' Gull, 1963 [230], p. 284.

Ira Brandhorst. 1964 [76], p. 4.1. ^Croxton, 1955 [151], p. 127.

53
Anglo-American tradition, "branching from Panizzi, via Jewett and Cutter," champions the principle of corporate authorship but finds it difficult to apply in specific situations. It is necessary that

the rules now used for this aspect of cataloging be

substantially simplified. "They must be snorter,

easier to understand, quicker to use, and capable of

greater consistency of application; and their re- sults must be better directed towards the legitimate

functions of the catalog and the needs of the users, and less costly in their operations." 180 Another entry in descriptive cataloging of an

item is the title. The informal nature of report

literature sometimes makes the selection of a title

difficult, since some reports have multiple title pages, some have cover titles, and some show no

titles. It is essential that the information given as the title be informative as well as accurate, and

that the substance of it be quickly understandable.

To this end, titles beginning with such words as Progress Report are often inverted so that the

subject information appears first.181 The determination of the date of a report is an- other problem because many reports are issued

either without dates or with multiple dates being

given. "The date of a report is of considerable

importance to the user in judging its worth and in

determining the priority of research effort." 182 The date is also important in cataloging for identification of delayed proceedings, collections of

hitherto unpublished papers and talks, and manufacturers' brochures and manuals.

Still another area of descriptive cataloging

which receives continuing attention and effort to- ward standardization is that of citing journal ref- erences, especially in abbreviated form. One tool

aimed at helping this effort is the Coden for Periodical Titles, prepared and maintained for Committee E-13 on Absorption Spectroscopy of the

American Society for Testing Materials (Kuentzel, 1963 [324] ) . The book contains nearly 20,000

coden for titles. The term "coden" is defined as "the combination of letters, numbers, and symbols

assigned to a document or other item as the result

of applying a set of coding rules." 183 The coden

are sets of presumably unique four-alphanumeric

character codes for the titles of periodicals. However, many possibilities of homographic ambiguities are evident and obviously involve a continuing

problem area. The ASTM list of coden was derived from one

desecribed by Bishop in 1953 [62]. The most com- monly used format gives a title code first, followed

by volume and page numbers and year of issue. Thus JACS-77-2282-55 indicates a reference to page 2282 of volume 77 of the /ournal of the American Chemical Society published in 1955. The

coden use four-letter codes only for periodicals;

nonperiodicals, patents, and one-time publications

180 Brandhorst, 1964 [76]., p. 36.

181 See Croxton, 1955 [151], p. 128.

183 Ibid., p. 129.

183 Bishop, 1953 [62], p. 58.

54

receive a different code. While the coden for periodicals are mnemonic, those for proceedings of a i symposium, minutes of a meeting, or a collection

of papers consist of two digits and two letters, \ bearing no mnemonic or other relation to the publication but serving to identify it via an index.

Other types of abbreviations for titles of periodicals have been used for years in the compila- I tion of bibliographies and "lists of references,"

and there have been many different rules developed to abbreviate the titles. Impetus should be

given to the attainment of standardization of the

abbreviations by approval of the American Standards Association American Standard for Periodical Title Abbreviations. The standard was

prepared by a subcommittee of the ASA Section

Committee Z39 on Standardization in the Field of

Library Work and Documentation. The Subcommittee on Periodical Title Abbreviations was or- ganized in December 1961 and began compilation,

with the use of punched card equipment, of a primary list of periodical title words that are fre- quently abbreviated. This primary list was compiled from lists of abbreviations supplied by

Index Medicus, Biological Abstracts, Bibliography of Agriculture, and Chemical Abstracts. \: The standard gives definitions of terms and rules

for omission of letters, word order, single word j| titles, articles, conjunctions and prepositions,

capitalization, punctuation, plurals, compound

words, clarification in abbreviation, and multilingual abbreviations.

After the composition of the citation has been

stabilized, its form must be considered. The GSIS j card with the citation to the left and main entry

by corporate author and tracings to the right "has I the advantage of being applicable in the direct ; photographic preparation of bibliographies using

cards from any or all . . . cooperating agencies."184

! The question of photoreproduction raises the

further example of complications in descriptive

cataloging : "The catalogue entry of a publication

in microform should be identical with that of the

original. The first supplementary note should in- i dicate the microform and whether it is a positive or negative copy . . . For positive copies the loca- tion of the negative should be indicated, if it is known." 185

3.6.2. Content Identification—Subject Cataloging

The Utopian ideal in literature indexing, universal bibliography or indexing, means indexing

everything in a piece of literature, "intentional,

incidental and accidental, that could possibly be

of interest to anyone, anywhere, anytime." 186 This is not practical even with full text search "by some mechanical brain indexing everything on

everything." 187 Instead the operations of subject

cataloging attempt to provide at least some measly Croxton, 1955 [151], p. 131, see also p. 14-15 of this report.

185 Gunther, 1962 [232], p. 10.

183 Metcalfe, 1959 [381], p. 12-13.

181 Ibid.
lire of control, to indicate what a book or docu-

| tnent "is about", and to provide a central means

of access to all items in the collection which are

'i "about" some subject or subjects.

For example, in a printed index or card catalog,

the objective is the entry of all that is indicated on a given subject at one point in the catalog.

Single volumes and sets of volumes, constituting

bibliographically complete works, are cataloged by

their general subject or subjects; in addition some

parts are recognized as linked bibliographical

units, such as chapters and essays in books and

articles in periodicals, and theses may be indexed

for their general subject contents. This indexing

or analysis is fairly completely and systematically

done for some subjects or some periodicals in periodical indexes and abstracting journals such as the

British Library Association's Subject Index to Periodicals, the Wilson Indexes, Plant Breeding

Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, and many others. Subject cataloging is not however as easily and

consistently accomplished as might seem possible

at first glance. Efforts are made to develop rules

and principles for subject cataloging as for descriptive cataloging, but the task is long and diffi- cult. Thus, serious efforts will continue to be

made in order to make subject cataloging easier, more consistent, and more useful for the searcher

of a collection. Toward these ends, many techniques have been proposed or are in practice for

i the analysis and recording of the subject content

of documents.

Systems of documentation may be used in the

selection, dissemination, and retrieval of information (or more properly of "documents containing

information"). Such systems for retrieval of in- formation "have been created because it was impractical, inconvenient, or excessively expensive to locate records personally." 188 Retrieval has been

accomplished traditionally by schemes for indexing and schemes for classifying. These schemes

assist a searcher, inspecting a file or library of

records, to find particular records usually in terms

of their subject interest. Such a searcher must

(1) predict the vocabulary of authors, probably

unknown to him, in dealing with matters which in- terest him; (2) predict the terminology with which

librarians or documentalists, probably unknown to him, have analyzed the records; and (3) predict

the symbols or other clues used by these librarians

or documentalists to record the results of their

analyses.

Indexing is the usual prerequisite for both the

selection and retrieval of documents and the information in them and for selective dissemination of

documents. It creates or uses one or more previously created surrogates for the content of a document and indicates or records those surrogates

associated with the document. An index is ". . . 'anything used to indicate, point out, or guide.'

188 Kent, 1963 [311],, p. 267.

The process of indexing involves selection of words

or ideas from a graphic record on the basis of welldefined rules ; the purpose of indexing is to facili- tate the identification or selection of desired

graphic records (documents, books, etc.) after they

have been sorted and shelved or stored." 189 In traditional American librarianship, the provision of a single point of access to items having

similar subject content has been by means of the

selection of an appropriate term or terms from a

set of alphabetically arranged subject headings.

A subject heading is defined by Frarey as a "word or verbal expression deliberately chosen

from among the various alternatives to express the

particular content of the material which it describes and which will be (1) in harmony with the

usage of the audience to whom it is addressed,

(2) accurate and precise in its specification of the exact subject of the material, (3) uniform, in the

sense that the same word or verbal expression will

be used consistently to describe the same subject,

and (4) amenable to integration with other subject

headings to provide a usable arrangement. In

American library practice . . . the use of subject

headings implies an alphabetical arrangement." 190 The sixth edition of the Subject Headings Used

in the Dictionary Catalogs of the Library of Congress states : "The present edition, like its predecessors, is a record of the headings traced on the

Library's printed catalog card and used in its card

catalogs and cumulative Catalog series. The list is the product of evolutionary forces, among them

the growth of the Library's collections, semantic

changes, and varying theories of subject heading

practice over the years. As a consequence the list

is, at any point in time, an accurate reflection

of practice but not a complete embodiment of

theory." 191 In the summary to his review and evaluation of

literature concerning the alphabetic subject catalog, Frarey makes 11 points, among which the fol- lowing are pertinent : ( 1) Present theory and practice of subject cataloging "is based primarily upon

tradition and assumption and does not reflect any

clear understanding of function or purpose." (3)

Evidence indicates that the subject catalog "will

be found to serve best the needs of any user for

general purposes, i.e., it will orient him to the

subject area of his inquiry; it will help him to

select the best material available for securing this

orientation ; and it will guide him to the other in- struments for subject access in his field of inquiry

if his needs extend beyond those of simple orientation." (8) Those imperfections and inconsistencies in present practice which have been shown by

studies of terminology, form and structure and. which cannot be eliminated or minimized "will

have to be resolved by the adoption of standards

189 Ibid, p. 267-268.

190 Frarey, 1960 [202],, p. 5-6. "Library of Congress, 1957 [338], p. iii.

55
based upon sound knowledge of linguistics, semantics, and grammar, study of which in relation to subject catalog terminology and structure is only

in its infancy at the present time." Further, (9)

the syndetic reference structure (provision of see and see also references) is infrequently used and

has even occasionally been abandoned altogether,

thus implying that the provision of a comprehensive inventory by a subject catalog does not derive

from an actual or a significant need, and that, in

any case, the ability of the reference structure to do this is limited by the practical limitations which

have been imposed upon its development. (11)

The ability of the subject catalog to give some

measure of satisfaction emphasizes "the need

served by it and that a subject catalog is likely to continue to be an essential feature in effective

library service. The evidence suggests further

that there is an excellent chance that a highly effec- tive subject catalog can be effected." 192 Becker and Hayes (1963 [48]) regard the cata- log of the library as its most important tool for

management of its collection. They believe that

the artificial or arbitrary decisions required of an

indexer at the input stage when he makes his initial assignments to documents are a drawback to the

subject heading system, although the question can

logically be asked whether this is not the case in

any human indexing scheme. The semantics of a heading change with time, as do the concepts

underlying an indexer's choice. The subject heading system also has the disadvantage of increasing

rapidly in terms of size and complexity.

Morris, in writing about the duality concept in

subject analysis, was concerned that the tenet "voiced most persistently today is that the more

'direct' and 'specific' the heading the better the

subject analysis." 193 Such headings are illustrated

by the alphabetically arranged sequence : Carbon

steels, Extra high carbon steel, High carbon steels, Steels. Indirect entry (by qualifying inversion)

is made to the principal noun common to all four

headings which then becomes the guiding word

for their alphabetic sequence in the Catalog:

Steels, Steels {Carbon), Steels (Carbon, extra high), and Steels (Carbon, high).

Morris was convinced "that in modern subject

cataloging, the phrase 'direct and specific' is synonymous with 'not subdivided extensively and not

inverted.' The most that can be said for this as a

basic principle is that in practice it succeeds in

separating (albeit scattering throughout the al- phabet) nonidentical data but it does practically

nothing to the end that similar or related data will

be brought together. Carried to its full implication it renounces completely one of the fundamental purposes of subject cataloging, the twin of the

duality concept concerned with giving the user some compresensive view of sizable segments of a collection and bringing pertinent relationships

iszprarey, 1960 [202], p. 63-65.

183 Morris, 1954 [395], p. 121.

into juxtaposition through a card catalog. This

becomes doubly significant if, for large areas of ft the library collection, subject cataloging must n carry also the burden of substituting for library e classification of data." 194 The other twin of the | duality concept of Morris is "to enable a user of a i library catalog to determine readily whether thej j library has available the particular bit of information which he desires . . . ." 195 Concept coordination, or coordinate indexing,

another approach to information storage and re

trieval, "was discussed in theory in the latter part

of the 19th century but was applied only in several

isolated situations until the beginning of World

War II. In the years since the war, concept co-j j ordination has gained progressively more accepts ance as inherent problems have been solved which

originally limited utility and effectiveness. . .

j In concept coordination, information is analyzed!

and characterized for storage and subsequent re-? trieval primarily by single word units to describes

single ideas or unit concepts." 196 The striking characteristic of coordinate in-l dexing systems is that the single terms used for in-f dexing are not combined in advance for storage,; as is true with the main headings plus modifiers ofj

subject heading systems. Coordinate indexing

systems are said to be post-coordinated; that is, combinations of the terms which describe a ques-f

tion are made at the time of asking the question.^

Further, "the basic principle of 'coordinate index-j I ing' is that of free combination of concepts . . . tot define a multidimensional search . . ." 197 Concept coordination systems are found in sev-1

eral forms, depending on the amount of complex-!

ity or structure present. Some systems even con-|

duct some amount of precoordination.

Coordinate indexing is denned more broadly "to|

include all systems in which the logical operation I of intersection, union, and negation are brought

into play in the manipulation of index terms. . . . whether Uniterms, keywords, descriptors, unit

concepts or structerms. . . ." 198 Examples will

illustrate the different types of systems.

The Uniterm system of coordinate indexing, developed by Taube in the early 1950's, described thep

informational content of documents, "after appro-!

priate analysis by qualified personnel, by the simplest practical word units of information referred { to as Uniterms. Uniterms are subject headings j for unit concepts, with all Uniterms possessing!

equal hierarchical stature, none subordinated ort superordinated to any other (as in classification) I and none existing in precoordinated arrangement'

with any other (as in traditional subject heading!

arrangement). Taube visualized Uniterms as

f predominantly single words." 199

184 Ibid, p. 122-123.

185 Ibid, p. 117.

189 Costello, 1961 [138], p. 21.

187 Taube et al. 1954 [562], p. 62.

188 Jaster, 1962 [2961. p. 23.

109 Costello, 1961 [138], p. 21.

56
"In the summer of 1952, the Armed Services

Technical Information Agency awarded a conract to Documentation Incorporated for an in- stigation and experimental installation of a then

:ompletely novel system for filing and retrieval of

nformation, the Uniterm System of Coordinate

Indexing . . . "Coordinate indexing as a generic term covers

ill forms of indexing in which the retrieval of

ipecific items of information involves the determiHiation of the logical product of a number of

"glasses . . .

'a' "The Uniterm System as a species of coordinate

M ndexing is a manual method of determining the

1 ogical product of two or more classes through the

device of 'arithmetical' coordination. The disf h ;overy of a common number on two or more Uni-

• erm cards establishes that there is a class which

e4s the logical product of the classes denoted by the

e " Jniterms and that the class has members. The

to 'members are, or course, the documents or other

terns designated by the common numbers." 200 Changes in Taube's original system between

1951 and 1961 affirmed the importance of the prine ' ;iple of bibliographical coordination even though

'f hey diverged sharply from the simplified initial concept. Among the changes which have been

nade in systems originally based on Uniterm are

5- .'ejection of equal values for terms, introduction

»• pf hierarchial relationships; retention of subject

s - luthority and cross reference systems, and the info :roduction of "role indicators" to serve as standard

subdivisions or modifiers and "links" to prevent

r -|jndesirable coordinations among terms. Artandi

s -jmd Hines argue that the changes introduced by

lsers of coordinate indexing "show, although this

s obscured by the terminology, a steady growth of

icceptance of the use and utility of major elements

conventional subject-heading practice as it has

developed from Cutter's basic work in 1876." 201 Premodification or precoordination of terms

11 (the compounding of a plurality of terms substituted for single terms when necessary to specify

the subject accurately for the purpose and search

J - (method at hand, e.g., Boundary layer or Aircraft

ie fire control systems) resulted in more or less

'• tiighly controlled terms. Another method of controlling the terms for a concept coordination sysd :em is by using "descriptors," general terms whose

!S|meanings encompass meanings of several other

2 :erms ; descriptors were devised to reduce the num-

>r 3er of terms in coordinate indexing vocabularies.

) By definition, a descriptor system has a limited

it I vocabulary ; a descriptor dictionary is usually

ir maintained, with "scope notes" to define the scope

is Hid meaning of each descriptor for the system.

The Zatocoding System of Mooers uses descriptors

n this way (1951 [394]).

Mooers has described his descriptors as follows

'The neologism 'descriptor' was purposely introduced in 1950 in order clearly to distinguish the

new method of indexing language from the other

and older systems such as : word indexing, stich- wort classification, schlagwort, subject heading,

etc. . . . "We may think of the whole descriptor, including the definition, or scope note, to which the label

is attached, as a packaged idea, as a concept which

is to be used primarily for retrieval in some particular retrieval system. . . . "Another characteristic, which is rather subtle,

is that the set of descriptors as a whole, and the

descriptors individually, are tailored to do a particular retrieval job." 203 More complex and structured schemes for con- cept coordination systems use role indicators and

links to modify the basic terms and to prevent

"false drops" or inaccurate coordinations.

The highly complex abstracts of documents or

"telegraphic abstracts" devised by Perry, Kent,

and Berry are another effort at reducing the problems of false drops and the difficulties with subject

interrelationships occurring in the coordinated

index or superimposed coding types of schemes.

According to Vickery, the central semantic

problem of subject indexing is the relation between

terms, and the three following modes of analysis,

distinguished in traditional logic, are used in different systems of information retrieval : ". . . the

physical analysis of a thing into its parts or constituents, or of a group into its members; the

logical analysis of a generic concept into its species; and the metaphysical analysis of a concept

into its attributes. A special instance of the last

is the analysis of the definition of a concept into

its elements." 204 Vickery sees also three techniques of semantic analysis in selection of indexing terms: the "analysis by definition" of Perry,

Kent, and Berry (1956 [455]) the "analysis by

operational definition" of Andrews and Newman

(1956 [31] ), and the "facet analysis" of Kanganathan (1957 [469]).

Perry et al., have analyzed words in science and

technology and find that "semantic factors," i.e., terms not further analyzed, and combinations of

these factors are sufficient for representation of the

words. Andrews and Newman represent a word

by the combination of a limited number of attri- butes, providing a series of "modulants," of cate- gories or inflecting codes, which serve to form

descriptors by inflecting the "ruly roots" for things

named in the literature (the "ruly" roots being

opposed to common "unruly" parlance). In the

facet analysis of Eanganathan, each of the terms

in a subject field is defined with respect to its parent class. The terms are then sorted into the

categories formed, such as substance, state, property, reaction, operation, or device, so that these

categories can be combined to form compound

terms.

200 Taubeet al, 1954, [562], p. 44-46.

201 Artandi and Hines, 1963 [35], p. 77.

203 Mooers, 1963 [392]/, p. 27.

204 Vickery, 1959 [613]<, p. 855-858.

57
In these three types of analysis the choice of

semantic level of indexing terms is aided or controlled by the formulation of categories which are concepts mentally fabricated with reference to the

world of experience. "There is general agreement that the most helpful form of classification

scheme for information retrieval is one which

groups terms into well-defined categories, which

can be arranged in hierarchies where this conforms

to the recognized structure of relations between

them." 205 A quite different approach to control of vocabulary and semantic and syntactic relations of terms

has been described by "Walton of the David Taylor

Model Basin, Navy Department, who has developed an artificial procedure-oriented language

FROLIC (formal Retrieval- Oriented Language

for indexing Content) , by which a machine may

manipulate those multifaceted descriptions of subject content of documents generated by analyticsynthetic techniques. The language "is built

around a categorized and hierarchically arranged

vocabulary combined with a simple grammar for

indicating certain essential roles or relationships

between index terms. . . . The key to the proposed

system is a thesaurus-dictionary in which word

associations and meanings are recorded. . . . The

basic or elemental concepts of the language are displayed in a Classified Schedule, where they have

been gathered into a few general categories. The

primary division is into the names of things and

the various characteristics that can be ascribed to them, viz, properties, conditions, actions and

relations." 206 The division, things, is classified into physical

substances and objects, the former being divided

into energy and matter and the latter into natural

objects, bodies (masses), and constructs (artificial

objects) , each of which is further divided. Walton

suggests that "the classification of basic concepts

(rather than subject headings) , along with semantic analysis of complex concepts, should help to unmask much current technical jargon, while the

development of an interdisciplinary vocabulary of

wide application in scientific documentation should

ultimately lead to greater compatibility between

systems." 207 Differences between subject headings and the

terms, simple or structured, for post-coordination

systems are useful for categorizing indexing techniques. A few other distinctions of categorization

merit attention.

The steps to be taken by an analyst in the selec- tion of indexing terms to represent a document

may be outlined as follows: "The text is scanned

to select a set of words, phrases or sentences which

collectively represent its subject. ... a decision is taken as to which of these subject descriptions are worth recording as being relevant to the purpose

206 International Federation for Documentation, 1957 [2851],

p. iii. 2M Walton, 1963 [62'6], p. 22. »" Walton, 1963 [626], p. 22.

of the retrieval system. . . . the relevant subj eel descriptions are transformed into the standard de- to scriptor language used in the system." 208 In scan- B ning the text two methods are commonly em- oi ployed : "First, the indexer reads the text and car U 'understand' it—i.e., he can formulate the subjeel te in his own words, which need not be the words usee « by the author. Second, the indexer cannot 'under- I> stand' the text in this sense, but he picks out fron "s it words, phrases or sentences which the author has;ce emphasized as important—the title, introduction in section headings, conclusions, summary, and mp

on." 209

l oi This distinction between methods is reflected ir ft contrasting "derivative" with "assignment" index- h ing (Luhn, 1962 [353] ; Herner, 1962 [255]) . Bj t this method of differentiation, "derived" terms an m taken from the texts of the documents themselves

while "assigned" terms are taken from a list d P terms or subject categories that exists independ ft ently of the documents. Indexing by assignment $ is obviously more likely to be concept indexing re than word indexing, and indexing by derivation is word indexing rather than concept indexing f Herner believes that the Uniterms of Taube, all ® least initially, were derived and that "Keyword te indexing and/or permutation indexing, whethei p based on titles, amended titles, or texts, constitutes

p an extreme example of indexing by derivation." 211 p As examples of indexing by assignment in non

conventional systems, Herner cites both Zatocoding pi and the work of Schultz in the man-computei )t indexing of the 1960 Federation of Americar u Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB)

papers. Herner states that elemental to Zatocod

ing "is the analysis of documents in terms of care^ se fully developed sets or classes of criteria that guid( p the use of and application of substituent indexing

terms or 'descriptors.' . . . Zatocoding tells yot ? when and how to select words or descriptors in s

'( vocabulary. In so doing, it helps to diminish re-; B dundancy and lack of consistency and con- i text. . . ." 211 In the work of Schultz with th( >i FASEB, "authors of papers selected appropriate n index entries from a list of possible entries fur- n nished them by the Federation and also from thm

terms used in the abstracts of their papers." zl

|

i Kent makes a similar distinction between wore i indexing and controlled indexing. Controlled in-; [ dexing "implies a careful selection of terminology

for storage in the index, in order to avoid as far as! 3 possible, the scattering of related subjects unde||

different headings. The control may be imposed!

by limiting the indexing (a) in the number of subm

jects that may be chosen, (b) in the number oi; aspects of subjects that may be chosen, and (c) iri. the language used to express the results of ihm

analysis." 213

2°8 Vickery, 1961 [61i6]<, p. 15-16.

209 Ibid, p. 16.

210 Herner, 1962 [255], p. 5.

211 Herner, 1962 [255],, p. 5.

212 Schultz. 1963 [509], p. 9.

213 Kent, 1963 [311], p. 268.

58
:0

3i

Four "schools" of documentation with respect

to the selection of indexing terms are discussed by

Becker and Hayes (1963 [48] ). These schools are of (1) Taube of Documentation, Inc., Bethesda,

Md., with coordination of concepts by use of Uniterms, usually in the form of single words or conail cepts; (2) Mooers of Rockland Research Institute,

Inc., Cambridge, Mass., who uses "descriptors" and

"superimposed coding" for efficient storage by

compacting codes randomly in a limited storage

area; (3) Perry and Kent, formerly of the Center

for Documentation and Communications Research

of Western Reserve University, Cleveland, who in- troduced "role indicators," "semantic factors," and

"analytic interfixes," and also the "telegraphic abstract" based on elements for describing a document's information content; and (4) the facet

4 analysis and colon classification schemes of the

school of S. R. Ranganathan, which postulates

i^tthat the relationships among things in a universe can be described in terms of their positions with

respect to each of a set of fundamental facets. Maloney and Batchelor relate indexing terms to words in languages and to the types of languages

evolved during the last century. One of their

tentative principles of information retrieval is that "retrieval index entries take three forms of

isolating, agglutinative, and aggregative codes

that words in languages do. Isolating codes show

a minimum of 'structure' and the greatest independence of context and order in the specification

of meaning. Descriptors, uniterms, and key words

ib are examples of such codes. Most classifications are examples of agglutinative codes, but colon,

UDC, and other faceted classifications, as well as semantic factor codes, are examples of aggregative

codes." 214 There have been perennial arguments pro and

con "word" or "derived" indexing and "assigned,"

"controlled," or "subject" indexing. Crane and

Bernier say that word indexes for articles in periodicals that are merely indexes of titles of papers

or of abstracts are to be regarded as generally

^incomplete: the titles frequently do not reveal, even in a broad sense, the contents of papers.

"Many so-called subject indexes are really indexes

of words instead of subjects. There is a vast

difference. Word indexing leads to omissions,

scattering, and unnecessary entries." 215 An index entry as used in Chemical Abstracts

includes a heading (word or phase selected to act

as guide to the subject, concept, author name, etc.)

a modification if necessary (additional statements

explanatory of the individual heading), and a

reference (for finding the item from which the

index entry was derived). "The subject index is designed to be a key to the information, not to be

the information itself. Index-heading terms

usually represent more or less general areas of information hi the document, but do not give specifically the information itself." 216 Welt (1959 [640]) also believes that word indexing (as opposed to subject indexing) is of dubious

value for indexing periodicals. Subject indexing,

however, involves rigid standardization of terms. The lack of standardized subject headings and

their flexibility or inconstancy both lead to a significant number of failures to retrieve the information that is desired.

Holmstrom suggests: "In the lexicography of

science it is of first importance to appreciate and

maintain the distinction between concepts—the

ideas or notions, phenomena or applications which

science uncovers, examines and exploits—and the

terms which scientists, in their reasoning and

communications, use as symbols to denote these

concepts." 217 He continues that "the concepts, once established, are fixed and immutable, but the

terms which scientific writers use as symbols for

them are fluid and susceptible to change. To a considerable extent they depend on nothing more

solid than fashion." 218 Furthermore, except for

Chinese and some Japanese "the terms are symbols

not for the concepts directly but for the sounds

which those who happen to have been born in a particular country are accustomed to utter or to imagine when they have particular concepts in

mind." 219 Holmstrom stresses that the concept of an action or a thing is not always known by the same word or words in a given language.

It is for such reasons that the different types of

indexing, derived and assigned, precoordinated

and postcoordinated, tend to converge. The problems of construction and use of thesauri, to be dis- cussed in section 3.7.1, are not very different from

the traditional work of establishing, standardizing,

and revising subject heading authority lists. In

this area, we note a particular example of proposed

cooperation on a broad scale : in 1954, Angell proposed that a national committee be formed on the

initiative of the Division of Cataloging and Classification of ALA, and that it should be a "joint

committee on standardization of subject headings.

There should be representatives of such national

associations as the ADI, the Association of College and Reference Libraries (particularly the

Reference Libraries Section), the Association of

Research Libraries, and SLA ; of such maintainers

of information systems as the H. W. Wilson Company and the LC; and of the informal group of

Government agencies working on these problems

under the title Group for the Standardization

of Information Services . . . [The committee]

should formulate the objectives and principles,

identify the research studies and form them into an integrated program, lay out the steps of proce214 Maloney and Batchelor. 1963 [369]. p. 108.

215 Crane and Bernier, 1958 [147L p. 515.

213 Bernier and Crane 1962 [55]., p. 117. m Holmstrom, 1955 [270], p. 73.

218 Ibid, p. 74.

219 Ibid.

59
dure precisely, set up a budget, get the money—

and supervise the execution of the work." 220 This

probably will have to be done to standardize the

universality of language to be used for storing

information among various groups in this country.

In summary, we might quote Herner to the effect that "the phenomenon that best characterizes modern documentation is the recurring denunciation

and discovery of the need for context and resolution in index entries." 221 and Artandi and Hines

who suggest that coordinate indexing "is moving

toward the use of conventionally formed subject

headings on the simplest possible level which can

serve for the identification of a distinct subject

and then applying bibliographic coordination of

these headings." 222

3.6.3. Cooperative and Centralized Cataloging

The history of cooperative cataloging in this

country had its beginning when "as early as 1851

Charles Coffin Jewett proposed an organization of

libraries in the country with the Smithsonian Institution as a center which would include cooperative cataloging among a group of cooperative enterprises. . . . The Smithsonian officials declined

to develop the program . . . The organization of

the American Library Association in 1876, later developments in the compilation of Cutter's Rules,

and the arrival of the 3x5 inch card had much to do with the picking up of the proposals." 223 Centralized cataloging, a form of cooperation,

is defined by E. Thompson in her glossary, (1943

[569]) as 1. The preparation in one library or

a central agency of catalogs for all the libraries of

a system. 2. The preparation of catalog cards by

one library or other agency which distributes them

to libraries." She also defines cooperative cata- loging as "The production of catalog entries

through the joint action of several libraries, in

order to avoid duplication of effort. Particularly,

the plan by which cooperating libraries prepare

copy for catalog cards to be printed by the Library of Congress." 224 In its position as the largest library in the

United States, the LC has been influential in affect- ing the manner with which many libraries here

and abroad perform their tasks, this influence

tending to promote cooperative activities among

libraries. One of the first evidences of such in- fluence was the issuance of printed catalog cards

by LC for sale to the general public about 1901.

The format of these cards including the suggested

classifications according to both the Dewey Decimal Classification and the LC schemes helps li- brarians to keep records of what they have and

where they have them. As Tauber says, "In the

United States, the Library of Congress has been a

centralized agency for cataloging, in addition to serving as a base for cooperative cataloging . . . .

22°An£ell, 1954 [331. p. 195-196.

221 Herner, 1962 [255], p. 6.

222 Artandi and Hines, 1963 [35]/, p. T6.

223 Tauber, M., 1960 [563], p. 191.

224 Thompson, E., 1943 [569],, p. 26.

The H. W. Wilson Company, which distributes

cards to libraries on a more restricted basis than

the Library of Congress, is also a centralized cata- loging agency." He continues, "Centralized cata- loging was started by the Library of Congress in

1902. A cooperative arrangement for acquiring

card copy from other government departmental

libraries was also put into effect. In 1902 there were 212 subscribers to the printed cards, return- ing a total of $3,785.19 to the United States Treasury." 225 The importance to librarians of ac- quiring these printed catalog cards is shown by the

insertion of the LC card number in many books

now published. In April 1930, LC began to add

Dewey numbers to its printed catalog cards.

Recently an interesting but unsuccessful experiment, called "cataloging-in-source," was tried by

the Library. It involved reproduction of the ac- tual LC card on the verso of the title page of new

publications. Publishers furnished LC with page

proofs and data sheets for their publications, LC

was to catalog the titles, and the publishers were to print facsimiles of the LC cards in the published

book. Libraries were then to transfer the catalog

entries from the books to cards for filing, by means

of special camera equipment. Although the ex- periment was subsequently abandoned, Evans suggests that the difficulties which were encountered

could be overcome and that an effort should be

made to extend the practice to a wider range of

publications both here and abroad. Such a sys- tem could sharply reduce the cost of cataloging

in the world's libraries.226 Types of publication which raise problems for

catalogers in many other libraries as well as LC

include technical reports and serial technical publications. "The problem of cataloging and classi- fying the mounting volume of [technical] reports

(some carrying a security classification) originat-l

ing in countless sources and varied forms outsider

the conventional channels of publication calls fori extensive cooperation by federal and non-federal

libraries .... A centralized mechanism to deal

with these reports should certainly be estab-J lished. . . . The total task is too huge to be ac- complished by any single library, but a great deal

could be achieved by a coordinated system of j; indexes to which many libraries would contribute." 227 Evans continues, "The Library of Congress has

long been active in the preparation of 'analytics'

card entries for items in periodicals and other publications. This service might well be expanded on

a government-wide basis as part of a major program which is needed to index and abstract the

rising flood of serial technical publications." 228 If cooperative cataloging could not be extensive, an abbreviated record short of a full catalog entry J would help to relieve the pressure of accumula225 Tauber, 1960 [563], p. 174-175, 191.

228 Evans, 1963 [188], p. 21.

227 Tauber, 1960 [563], p. 49.

228 Ibid, p. 50.

60
tions of unsorted and unidentified material which

plague librarians. Even maintenance of an author

card file and shelving by author would help. But

centralized cataloging such as is carried on by the

Veterans Administration would seem to offer much

promise. The VA, whicli has been compared to a

city library with 450 branches in 50 states, operates a coordinated acquisition and cataloging service

centrally and supplies new books and their catalog

cards ready for filing. The operation has brought

cataloging costs down to 35 cents per title, as compared to an estimate of gross personnel costs of

$3 to $4 per volume.229 Another figure for cataloging a nonfiction book shows variations from 35

cents to $6 per title. 230 Veterans Administration officials indicate their

willingness to consider requests from other Government libraries to use this service on a cost basis. In regard to this centralized operation combining

purchase and analysis, Evans suggests" . . . the

fuller use of acquisition and order records as the

first step in cataloging; the present failure to exploit this information is most wasteful." 231 Another Government agency taking advantage

of coordination in cataloging is the Clearinghouse

for Federal Scientific and Technical Information

which, since the inception of its cooperative program with the Defense Documentation Center, has

made some changes in cataloging practices to avoid

duplication and achieve economy. The Clearinghouse uses DDC descriptors in its subject indexing and produces paper tapes for input to the

DDC computer as a by-product of its own an- nouncement function and catalog card preparation, modifying an earlier arrangement between

the predecessor agencies, Office of Technical Services and the Armed Services Technical Information Agency.

Two cooperative ventures in cataloging have

been undertaken by the National Federation of

Science Abstracting and Indexing Services: (1)

installation of a bank and share arrangement for

in-shop files, glossaries, instructions, etc. for use of other member services (e.g., CA microfilm of

60,000 cross references for its subject index, DDC

frequency analysis of descriptors) and (2) set up

of a warning system for changes in format and

coverage detail in existing systems of members,

to encourage overlap and continuity between members in indexing.

3.6.4. Cataloging Rules and Guidelines

We shall review, roughly in chronological order,

the concerted activities in the United States looking toward rules and directions for the physical

and content identification of books and other publications. This is perhaps the area where the

greatest amount of cooperative activity is needed

and has been accomplished.

223 Evans. 1963 [188]/, p. 4.

23»Oellrich, 19&3 [435]i, p. 67.

231 Evans, 1963 [188], p. 25.

Charles A. Cutter strongly influenced the subsequent cataloging activities of librarians by his

1876 Rules for a Printed Dictionary Catalog

([153]) as claimed by Landau, this is probably

the first complete code of rules for a dictionary

catalog and is still the basic standard code.232 Among the first of the achievements of the ALA

that are contributions to cooperation and compatibility was the issuance of a guide in three successive editions : Condensed Rides for an Author

and Title Catalog, 1883; Cataloguing Rules: Author and Title Entries, 1908, issued by the ALA

and the Library Association (Great Britain), the

first international catalog code; and ALA Cataloguing Rules for Author and Title Entries, 2d

ed., 1949, [19].

During the early 1950's there was considerable

thought given, around the world, to the adequacy

of cataloging codes, and at the 21st annual conference of the Graduate Library School of the

University of Chicago in June 1956 a series of

papers devoted to this subject was delivered.233 Angell took the view that the catalog should be

a means of access not only to printed materials but

to all the preservable manifestations of human

communication, from manuscripts to sound recording to sculpture. He questioned whether the next

coding system could be no longer traditionally

book-oriented but equally suitable for all forms

of records. Osborn, representing the group appointed by the International Federation of Library Associations to promote coordination in

cataloging, spoke principally on those developments which affect the two great cataloging traditions, stating that the real trouble spot was the

corporate entry. Chaplin spoke on a universal

cataloging code and related the events leading to the decision by IFLA, at its Zagreb conference in

1954, to set up a working group on the international coordination of cataloging principles.

Effort is being expended by representatives of

the ALA and LC to prepare a new code of cata- loging rules as is shown by the tentative publication in 1960 by the ALA of Code of Cataloging

Rules: Author and Title Entry [349]. Subtitled

"An Unfinished Draft for a New Edition of Cataloging Eules," the publication was prepared by

Seymour Lubetzky of LC for the Catalog Code

Eevision Committee of the Cataloging and Classification Section of the ALA Resources and Technical Services Division. The draft is accompanied

by an explanatory comment by Paul Dunkin who

claims that Lubetzky "rescues" the library profession with his code and that Lubetzky begins by

restating objectives which C. A. Cutter had stated

in 1876.

The objectives Lubetzky sets forth are (1) to

facilitate the location of a particular publication,

i.e., of a particular edition of a work, which may

232 Landau, 1958 [327]i, p. 65.

233 See The Library Journal, October 1956.

208-371—66 5 61
be in a library, and (2) to relate and display to- gether the editions which a library has of a given

work and the works which it has for a given author. The draft of the Code contains four parts:

works of personal authorship ; works of corporate

authorship; government publications; and works

of unknown, complex, or changing authorship.

There have been important changes suggested

in the rules for the Code. As of 1961 most li- brarians were ready to recommend use of the new

rules primarily for new authors with only limited

effort to be made in changing established headings,

but in general there is still no agreement on rules

for descriptive cataloging in a dictionary cata- log : ". . . the library profession, since the appear- ance of the ALA revision, has not agreed on its cataloging rules." 234 A booklet containing instructions for the cata- loging of technical reports and related materials

has been made available by an agency of the U.S.

Government. This is the DDC's A&TIA Guidelines for Cataloging and Abstracting, which also

contains instructions on matters other than descriptive cataloging.

Joint meetings on descriptive cataloging were

held in 1963 by representatives from DDC, NASA,

OTS, and the National Bureau of Standards. One

result of these meetings was the Standard for Descriptive Cataloging of Technical Reports, needed

for the effective retrieval of reports as reference

material. Such use was hampered by the wide

variety of labels and codes attached to them in

great but seemingly meaningless array. Taube in 1950 discussed the cataloging of publications of corporate authors, stating that the

rules for corporate entries in the Science and Technology Project of LC began with the specification

that ". . . corporations or other collective bodies

of men under whatever name are to be considered

and treated as authors of their official reports,

proceedings, and other publications for which

they are collectively responsible. . . . Enter the

publications of a corporate entity under its name.

. . . The form of the name is to be determined

by information available in the work being cata- loged and in authority lists from cataloging previous works and from these two sources only. The

form of the entry given on the title-page or else- where in the work being cataloged may be modified in the entry only if a different form has al- ready been established and is used in the catalog." 235 Such a rule relieved the cataloger from

performing "research work" or searching to dis- cover other possible and perhaps more accurate forms for entry. A third rule concerned the subdivisions of corporate bodies whose names are not

suitable for entries: "If the title-page or other

parts of the work being cataloged disclose that a

division or part of a corporate body was respon234 Commerce by Taube, Conference Session II, In Markuson,

1964 [372], p. 58. Taube, 1950 [556], p. 15.

sible for the report, entry should be made under Ci the division or part." 236

\ These rules are still advocated, as suggested re- cently: "Any new\ code developed by agencies C( working in the report literature should at least

p take these trends [cataloging from the information

p contained in the document itself, use of name most c; frequently used in publications rather than offi- cial names, rejection of distinctions between types I of corporate bodies and of entry under geographic

location, emphasis on entry under most specific

j entity, etc.] into account. They are the result of j j a great deal of work by experienced and progressl sive librarians engaged in a needed reform activ-

| ity, and they are undoubtedly the pattern for fu- i ture international growth in this area. Any given : • report-processing agency might be either too small, i j with a custom-built system operating reasonably

j

( well, to consider any drastic changes ; or it might

be too big, with too much invested in existing card ; j. catalogs, tapes, indexes, etc., to consider changing, j j. But those not in these categories, agencies just i

| starting their activities, or those who must arrange

] for consistency or compatibility among various

agencies, could with profit study these develop-

| ments." 237 Descriptive cataloging rules concentrate on 1 physical identification of publications ; content !. identification also raises problems and needs prin-

\ ciples for guidance. "Subject cataloging . . . II has many ramifications. It is not suggested that a

( tight standard be attempted but rather a general

guideline standard with the requirement that sub- jj ject cataloging be done in depth on each technical

t report. It is suggested that the professional li- brian of the activity originating the report set 1

forth the subject cataloging entries in a descending order of importance as they pertain to the

report. This will allow a receiving library to scan j . the entries and select those used in their own li- \, brary subject catalog." 238 The International Conference on Cataloging

' Principles, sponsored by IFLA, was held in Paris 1

! in 1961. The preliminary official report of the

Conference was published by the UNESCO Bulletin for Libraries (1962 [286]). The official re- h

port was published in 1963 by the International f Federation of Library Associations in London and ! was made available in the United States in 1964

by the ALA, Chicago. Atherton, an observer at- tending the Conference, reports that the delegates I "discussed the fundamental principles underlying

the choice and form of headings and entry-words . in alphabetical author-and-title catalogs. . . . The

discussions about corporate authors (what works I should be entered under corporate authors; form j of heading for corporate authors, and subordinate

bodies) showed quite clearly that it was going to be possible to have greater agreement in library

2M Ibid, p. 18.

5« Brandhorst, 1964 [76], p. 42.

23S Langenbeck, 1962 [329], p. 298.

62
catalogues of the future than it could have been

hoped possible." 239 Resolution IV called for the compilation by each

country of lists of the names of the principal cor- porate bodies existing in each country, for the

purpose of standardizing corporate author

cataloging.240

3.6.5. Use of Machines for Description and Identification There is a dearth of mechanical devices, multipurpose forms, and other means of reducing the

clerical work connected with cataloging. For in- stance, catalogers could record most of their decisions on a dictaphone or Stenowriter. The tape

typewriter, of which Mooers spoke so eloquently

in England, France and Germany in the Spring of

1960 ( [389] )

, is one tool that can be used for cata- log production. The tape typewriter plan offers means for (1) improving cataloging and eliminating duplication of effort in cataloging among

libraries and (2) increasing clerical efficiency in

the cataloging operations now being done at each

library.

The tape typewriter is described as having a keyboard whose operation causes both the characters to be imprinted on a sheet of paper placed in

the machine and a perforated paper-tape record

to be made of everything typed. The typewriter

must also have a "reader" to read the perforated

tape and operate the typewriter in accordance with

the perforations on the tape.

Mooers states that "in a fully capable tape typewriter the letters of the alphabet, numerals, punctuation, 'capitals,' 'carriage return and line advance,' 'tabulate,' and 'backspace' are all recorded

by patterns of punches in the tape." Once the

paper tapes have been read into the memory of an

electronic computer, "the machine can rearrange

the sequence of entries making up each card, putting (for example) the author's name first. Then

inside its electronic and magnetic memory, it can

also perform an alphabetization by author's name

for a large collection of cards. When these alphabetization operations are completed, the machine

can then perforate a new tape which will control a typewriter to type up cards in alphabetical sequ- ence according to the authors' names !" 241 "The basic principle which is being stressed by

Mr. Mooers in his tape-typewriter plan is that any

mechanical storage which is accomplished should

be done in standardized machine-readable form so that the machine-readable text can be used by

many persons and installations throughout the

world." 242 "This plan offers several advantages to the re- trieval center and cooperating institutions in addition to the speed of manuscript transmission via

paper tape. First, this machine-readable record

of the bibliography or portions thereof, will be

233 Atherton, 1961 [40], p. 583.

240 See Brandhorst. 1964 [76];, p. 38.

211 Mooers, 1960 [393], p. 277-281.

243 Gull, 1962 [228], p. 58.

made available to cooperating documentation units

and the possibility of reciprocal exchange exists. Also the preparation of edited machine-readable

bibliographic entries is done once, never having

to be repeated.

"The first large scale implementation on an in- ternational basis of the 'tape-typewriter plan' for

cooperation between documentation centers, has

been initiated between Italy and the United States. This particular application of the plan entails the

transmittal of entries in an international serial current bibliography from the . . . FAO . . . headquarters, Rome, to the Aquatic Sciences In- formation Retrieval Center (ASIRC) at the

University of Rhode Island." 243 Within one to two years of Mooers' announce- ment, Bernstein (1962 [57]) of Euratom/CETIS,

Brussels, Belgium, was writing in the German

Nachrichten fur Dokumentation and in the

UNESCO Bulletin for Libraries that generally a

Flexowriter is economical under the following cir- cumstances: (1) where a number of different documents must be processed; (2) where the documents must be processed by a routine that is in- variable or only slightly variable; (3) where the

routine can be divided into stages for successive

processing; and (4) where information from previous stages is repeated at these stages, other information added, and part of the resultant total body

of information transmitted to the next processing

stage.

Lipetz describes techniques and equipment for

simultaneous production of manual and machineusable book cataloging records as a first step in

introducing a machine record system for the book

catalog at the Research Library of the Air Force

Cambridge Research Laboratories, L. G. Hanscom

Field, Bedford, Mass. Punched paper tape was

created in the course of continued production of

3x5 inch index cards as similar as possible to those

in the existing catalog. The input typing format,

designed for a special-purpose computing machine,

the Crossfiler, produced sets of catalog cards at

less cost than the utilization of a general-purpose

computer. Sets of catalog cards were obtained

with identical text in the body of a card but differ- ent tracings (entries at the top of a card for title, abridged title, subject, etc.), derived automatically

from the text contained in the primary punched

tape.244 An example of an early investigation into mechanized documentation is the activity preceding

the arrival of MEDLARS at the National Library of Medicine, the "Welch Medical Library

Indexing Project," a research program conducted

by the Welch Medical Library of Johns Hopkins

University and supported by the Armed Forces

Medical Library through a contract between it and the University. Larkey reported (1953

[332] ) that the Project began with the interest of

243 Scientific Information Notes 5, 3, 1 (1963).

244 Lipetz, 1963 [343], p. 119, 121.

63
the Army Medical Library in the program of the

"Welch Library (following World War II) for

training medical librarians in the necessary re- search aspects. The scope of the project included

(1) studying the problems of indexing medical

literature; (2) exploring the theory and practice

of subject heading (nomenclature) and classifica- tion (coding) as they concern medical literature;

and (3) exploring methods, particularly machine

methods, applicable to medical bibliography, operating any pilot projects needed, and reporting on

suitability of machine methods in the operation of

the Army Medical Library.

Larkey reported at the 1956 [331] "Conference on the Practical Utilization of Recorded Knowledge-—Present and Future" on the prospects for

cooperative information processing in medicine.

He suggested that until that time there had been

little effective cooperative effort. In the 1920's the

American Medical Association, publisher of Quarterly Cumulative Index, and the Surgeon General's

Library (later Armed Forces Medical Library, and

still later the National Library of Medicine) , which

sponsors the Index-Medicus, cooperated to compile

a merger, the Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus. In 1956 the AMA became solely responsible

for the Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus, and

the Armed Forces Medical Library revived the

Current List of Medical Literature, begun in 1941,

destined to become the new Index Medicus.

Larkey also saw a need for "full and frank dis- cussion as to how and why the various information

aids are produced ; why they select material from

certain documentary sources (periodicals and other

sources of information) ; then, in turn, why these

documentary sources exist, for what purpose, and

their relation to the local research effort." 245 He

identified an additional area for cooperation in the

preparation of the subject indexes for the Current

List or Chemical Abstracts by machine methods,

with the modification of the "coding as used for the

index to coding for machine searching." Larkey

related that the Welch Library Indexing Project

had found real possibilities on the basis of experimental runs. "Here we made use of the subject

entries and subdivisions from the actual subject in- dexing slips for an issue of Current List. It might

be advisable to code for information, as from the

'modifications,' as in Chemical Abstracts and Current List." 246 The MEDLARS project, current work on mechanized indexing at the National Library of Medicine, has already been described briefly. The subject headings published in Medical Subject Headings "are the only tags that may be used as headings in Index Medicus. ... In effect, there is one

level of indexing for Index Medicus and two levels of indexing for both demand and recurring bibli- ographies. ... It is anticipated that each cita- tion will have an average of 10 tags assigned, but

245 Larkey, 1956 [331], p. 304-305.

246 Ibid, p. 306.

only an average of three of these tags will be

checked by the indexer as those tags under which

the citation will appear in Index Medicus." 247 Other tags prepared by the indexers and never appearing in Index Medicus will include provisional headings for new descriptors, age group

tags, Public Health Service support group tags,

and geographical tags.

In the case of Nuclear Science Abstracts, Day

and Lebow describe a procedure which began in

1959 to provide four indexes for subject, personal

and corporate authors, and report number (with

availability information) for each semimonthly

issue of the AEC's NSA. "The new AEC techniques have eliminated the time consuming and

costly manual operations by using speedy and eco- nomical machine operations. The new system

uses equipment that is readily available and is suc- cessful through the effective adaptation and combination of the products of several manufacturers.

In its simplest terms the index production system

provides for : (1) typing of index entry in a prescribed area of an IBM accounting machine punch

card; (2) machine coding the punch card so that

the thousands of index entries can be machine

sorted and arranged; (3) machine controlled

photographing of the cards at a rate of 230 cards

(lines) per minute; and (4) arrangement and

makeup of the resultant negatives into plate negatives for photo offset printing." 248 Day and Lebow suggested that there would be no need for AEC catalog cards thereafter : "Each

user of Nuclear Science Abstracts, whether at the ij laboratory bench or in the library, will have in j effect a complete catalog to nuclear science information." 249 Sherrod, however, sees that ". . . the [ elimination of one requirement introduces a new j; requirement. Specialized bibliographies with abstracts no longer can be prepared easily by manual | shingling of catalog-abstracts cards. Thus, there ! is a new requirement for storing abstracts in such a way that when special bibliographies are provided on request it will be a simple matter to include an

abstract with each entry without going through

j the laborious process of retyping." 250 The AEC Division of Technical Information j< Extension has experimented with tape typewriters j for producing technical abstracts and also with

"semiautomatic indexing" from the information

contained in an abstract and from a single effort in the production of that abstract for hard-copy

purposes. The experiments on indexing are re- ported and demonstrated in RDA-3 and -4, the

Research and Development Abstracts of the USAEC for July-September and October-December

1962. _ The reasoning of the AEC, as explained in

J these issues, was "that, if the title plus the abstract \ could be used as a source of subject headings, the

depth and range of subject indexing would be con547 National Library of Medicine, 1963 [412K p. 9-10.

248 Day and Lebow, 1960 [161], p. 122.

249 Ibid, p. 127.

250 Sherrod, 1963 [529], p. 215.

64
e siderably increased over that possible with KVVlC

1 indexing from titles only. . . . Words or phrases

; were underlined by the abstract editor to provide

r suitable subject points. These terms were then

coded in tape by the Justowriter operator at the

) time the abstract was prepared for the journal."

The method was "devised to code or 'lock' into

the tapes the various components, terms, phrases,

; etc., of the abstract that would produce the follow-

! ing indexes: (1) personal author, (2) corporate

1 author (source), (3) subject, (4) report number,

\ and (5) journal citation." In a paper describing

i the project, Sherrod concludes that the economic

feasibility and other technical advantages of this

1 method over former conventional procedures was

proved : "What remains to be determined are the

i retrieval efficiency and/or the degree of user ac- ceptance of this new subject index." 251

\ A most significant development in the area of

achieving cooperation, compatibility, and coni vertibility by virtue of author-editor-machine col- laboration in the indexing of journal articles and

conference proceedings is the FASEB experimentation with machine-aided compilation and

normalization of indexes. In a sense, this is the

first example of a computerized authority list; in

another, it is a practical application, at least in a

prescriptive manner, of a mechanized thesaurus.

Schultz and Shepherd have described (1960

[512] ) the use of the UNIVAC computer in scheduling the meeting of the Federation of American

Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB) in

April 1960 and preparing an index for the meeting. During the summer of 1959 the 2,383 abstracts of the 1959 meeting were indexed; a computer was used to determine those index terms with

enough specificity to classify the abstracts into

groups of 10 or 12 each. The computer findings were then modified and rearranged to produce a

list of subject categories designed to make explicit

the areas of current research in experimental

biology of interest to FASEB. The UNIVAC

computer and other equipment were then used (1) to publish the 2,526 abstracts submitted or sponsored by members in 1960; (2) to arrange the abstracts into subject groups of 10 or 12 each for

purposes of programming the meeting; (3) to schedule the sessions to avoid conflicts whenever

possible; and (4) to prepare a subject index to the

abstracts. In 1963 Schultz ([509]) used a magnetic-tape

thesaurus and a computer program to edit authorproduced indexing terms and phrases for the

FASEB Proceedings of that year. The FASEB

thesaurus was constructed after considerable perusal of other authority lists in the biomedical field. For input to the computer routine, there were the

key-punched title to each paper to be indexed and

the indicia supplied by the author, the words

thereof being marked "with the number of the

document from which they originate as well as the

261 Sherrod, 1963 [529], p. 215.

number of the sentence or phrase and the position

within the sentence or phrase." After the meaningless words were extracted from these sources, the "remaining words are resorted into their ori- ginal order within each document description and

all sentences and phrases are sorted into alphabetical sequence. Processing against the thesaurus

is begun on a word-by-worcl basis for each of the

sentences and phrases."

This computer program uses the thesaurus to perform four basic functions: (1) it accepts cer- tain words without modification ; (2) it recognizes

certain words as being acceptable if modified, and

then it modifies them; (3) it recognizes certain

words as acceptable and adds other indexing terms on the basis of their presence, (thereby performing a "syndetic" function, i.e., automatically posting "see also" terms) ; and (4) it deletes certain

nonindexable words not on the original delete list because of the possibility of their being contained

in an acceptable indexing phrase.

Three other citations are of interest in the matter

of application of computer techniques. Welt in

speaking about indexes and index mechanization

in biomedicine says, "It is now possible to provide

general, shallow indexes to the entire field as well

as specialized, deep indexes tailored to the needs of

specialized research workers or practitioners." 252 Taube is convinced that "the design and display

of terms in an authority list or 'thesaurus' to be

used for both machine searching and as a guide

to a published index remain to be determined.

Experience may indicate that the two purposes

cannot be combined and different code books of

'thesauri' may be necessary for the mechanized

retrieval portion and the published portion of an

information center's apparatus. It may also turn

out to be the case that different types of guides

and instructions are required for the indexer and

searcher." 253 Weber, writing in 1957, decided in considering

the quagmire of scientific literature that "the conclusion to be drawn is that the use of machines

for storage and retrieval of information is likely to be practicable only through a man-machine partnership, and is not going to be commonly feasible

for many years to come." 254 He says specifically

concerning indexes that "it is logical to expect that

a great increase in extremely brief subject entries,

arranged in chronological order, will characterize

the future subject indexes to scientific material

with the older material being indexed merely by

an author file, and with subject cards thrown out

after a period of time." 255 Machine use in the generation of assignment

indexes implies requirements for compatibility and

convertibility for mutual agreement as to contents and scope of commonly used technical thesauri or mechanized authority lists ; mutually agreed upon

252 Welt, 1963 [641], p. 173.

253 Taube, 1963 [558], p. 179.

2« Weber, 1957 [631], p. 106.

255 Ibid, p. 118.

65
listings of equivalent index term vocabularies for

interconversion, one system to another ; and specific

identification of format, field designators, and

coding practice if all machine-usable records are

to be interchanged.

"For automatic indexing, statistical methods

based on frequency of words in documents are being investigated. Similar procedures are also being tested in the production of 'automatic abstracts.' The effectiveness of such procedures in

selecting the significant portions of scientific papers has yet to be demonstrated. . . . Further

research is needed to determine whether automatic

indexing and abstracting procedures and nor- malized languages will be of practical use in

storage and retrieval systems." 256

3.7. Systematization and Terminology Control

Enforcement of both lexical and syntactic regularities in indexing vocabularies and documentary

languages requires either compatibility or convertibility if processed materials are to be ex- changed between two or more systems. In addition, compatibility or convertibility within a single

system is required if the searcher or user is to be

freed from rigid adherence to the prior indexing

rules and language.

Two rather comprehensive examples of such documentary languages are the Western Reserve

semantic code and telegraphic abstract system and

SYNTOL (/Synt&gm&tic (Organization of Zanguage) . In both these cases, some consideration

has already been given to mechanized procedures

for automatic conversion from ordinary language

to the system language. Convertibility between

the language of search requests and the selection

indicia within these systems is achieved by consist- ent application of the translation rules both to the

language of the requests and to that of the items

stored. That is, a translation is made from ordinary words in natural language text to regularized

words or terms in a documentary language.

Standardized, or mutually agreed upon, vocabularies at a variety of levels are required: (1) at the level of code representation of characters in

machine language: number of characters accom- modated by code, which characters are accommodated by code; (2) at the level of characters ac- ceptable as input: size of allowable vocabulary,

what characters ; provision for other characters as required for multiple-coding, shift keys, etc.; £3) at the level of characters acceptable as output; (4) at the level of indexing vocabulary or documentary language; (5) at the level of aids, e.g. wordlists, thesauri, dictionaries, stop lists, and the like,

and (6) at the level of internal processing of

character strings: fixed versus variable word

length, fixed versus variable field length, fixed ver- sus variable record length, and fixed or variable

file length.

U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 105.

Next, and more crucial, is the level of the documentary language itself "There is no doubt that,

if rational methods of automatic information re- trieval are to be established, a study of the lin- guistic structure of documents from which the

information is to be drawn cannot be neglected

regardless of the particular method used. Furthermore, one of the problems which documentation must certainly solve in the future (and per- haps its most important problem) would, seem to be that of devising a rational 'documentary language' standardized on an international scale." 257 Even though such study of linguistic structure seems necessary, "there have been relatively few

studies of principles of organizing or classifying

knowledge systematically and few attempts to devise better systematic organization irrespective of

the techniques (manual or mechanized.) subsequently used in processing information." 281 There have been developed, however, "... a cer- tain number of rather general practical procedures,

resulting from common requirements and conditions which are imposed upon them by characteristics peculiar to the new 'machines' (this term is here used in its broadest sense) for the retrieval of

documents and the information contained therein.

Such were, for example: the breakdown of complex subjects into simple factors (or, at least, less complex) ; the transition from highly hierarchical

classification systems to less hierarchical systems

the realization of the necessity of expressing not

only the elementary terms used in the analysis of

documents, but also the relations between them." 259 Early experiments with such developments are found in the work of Perry, Berry, and Kent.

The capability for using hand-sorted marginpunched cards for small collections of information

had been reported in 1945 by Cox, Bailey, and

Casey ([145]). In 1946 the Board of Directors

of the American Chemical Society set up a Committee on Punched Cards with James W. Perry,

then a library fellow at the Massachusetts Institute

of Technology, as head. In 1947, a modest sum

was obtained from industry to continue the investigation. Following the expiration of the ACS

grants, the support of the activity was taken over by the MIT Center for Scientific Aids to Learning,

with the aid of a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, Perry continued as chairman of the re- named ACS Committee on Scientific Aids to Lit- erature Searching and at this time he and G. Malcolm Dyson approached Thomas J. Watson, Sr., president of IBM, suggesting the development of I machines suitable for searching literature.

H. P. Luhn, of IBM's engineering laboratory,

then proposed sending the standard IBM punched

card through a machine endwise, devising a punch

code by which any information could be punched ! in any of the 80 vertical columns, and using photoelectric scanning and the principle of comple- i

257 de Grolier, 1962 [170], p. 144.

258 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 103-104.

259 de Grolier, 1962 [170];, p. 10. 66
mentary pattern matching: To look for a given

piece of information, "the complement of its code

a 7-hole pattern—is punched in a question card.

The question card is mounted in the scanning machine so that the cards to be examined pass between

it and the photoelectric cell. When a match is made, no light passes, and the punched card is kicked out." 260 Perry and his associates then began work to develop a machine language for literature searching

(1956 [455]). They centered their attention on

the semantic aspects of machine searching, con- cluding that the analysis of index terminology

could be incorporated into a code dictionary since

the semantic significance of most words for scientific and technical indexing remains reasonably

invariant in different contexts. Perry and his as- sociates arrived at the concept of semantic factoring where words are examined for their semantic

components. (A colorimeter is a machine for analysis with color, so its code designation must refer

to all these factors.) Perry also developed "role

indicators" whereby there is affixed to the codes

for various terms special symbols for designating

the function or role. In this way distinction between initial reactants, final products, and conditioning agents is possible by preceding their code

designations by S, F, and K, respectively.

These investigators proposed four steps for

processing information for search by automatic

equipment : ( 1 ) underlining keywords and phrases

or supplying marginal notations to designate important aspects of a subject ; (2) editing the underlined or annotated words or phrases to produce an

"abstract" of unusual literary style which, however, is intelligible before encoding; (3) encoding

the edited abstract with the aid of the code dictionary; and (4) recording the encoded abstract

by means of a card punch. The fourth step may

be eliminated when encoding will be accomplished

with an automatic, key-punching dictionary.

The general approaches to standardized languages or vocabularies for information systems

are concerned with thesaurus development, with

classification schemes, and with interchange of in- dexing languages. We shall examine these in turn.

3.7.1. Thesauri

The potentialities of thesaurus-aided systems for

indexing, abstracting, storing, selecting, and re- trieving pose both new requirements for cooperation, compatibility, and convertibility, and new

opportunities in each of these areas. For the most

part, the early proposals for a thesaurus-type approach to mechanized documentation envisioned

manual compilation and preparation and manual

scanning for either indexing or searching purposes. It was quite generally assumed that major

cooperative efforts between representative users and subject matter specialists would be required to

s8o "New Tools for the Resurrection of Knowledge," 1954

[423]i, p. 867.

organize such tools. More recently, it has been

suggested that machines can be used to assist in

construction, and updating or reorganization, and

to provide an "early-warning" system with respect

to changing terminology or to changes of subject

interest in a collection.

Examples are "words not found in the dictionary would be noted by the machine during the

encoding process and spelled out for subsequent

manual editing. This would involve the assignment of a notional family or families to the new

word and its addition to the index. As a matter of

course, each new document would also be submitted to a search operation to discover duplications, variations, and contradictions with respect

to previously stored documents. This search

would also serve to obtain a measure of the dis- criminatory characteristics of the system as the

collection grows." 261 "If it is assumed that the documents in a typical

technical library reflect the purpose of the library

reasonably well, then it is logical to allow these

documents to generate both the indexing dictionary and the thesaurus. One way of doing this is to prepare a word-association matrix of the type

developed by the Integrated Engineering Control

Study of DuPont. This is essentially a list of asso- ciated terms statistically generated from the documents in the DuPont store. It is primarily a thesaurus used as a word-reminder list, but tends

also to generate connotative definition of words in

the sense that two words almost always found in

the same document reflect on the meaning of each

other." 262 "Use of a thesaurus in editing the input data for

the index is an optional feature of the generalized

indexing technique . . . Once the thesaurus has

been constituted, it is convenient to use it as a means of proofreading the input descriptors.

Thus, every descriptor not appearing in the the- saurus ( and therefore not recognized by the indexing system) is put out for human inspection.

Discrepancies . . . may be either mispellings . . . or new descriptors not yet recognized." 263 Even in the early proposals for thesaurus use

in documentation a number of aspects likely to involve machine considerations of compatibility

and convertibility were raised. Some illustrative

examples are as follows : ". . . It is reasonable to think that the further we can go in routinizing

and mechanizing the techniques of translating

ordinary language into a regularized language and

of coding for machine manipulation, the more will we be likely to achieve economically feasible machine searching on a large scale . . . [Some investigators] have come up with the thought that the

best answer . . . may be the application of a mechanized thesaurus based on networks of related

meanings." 204

281 Luhn, 1957 T3601, p. 316.

203 Lockheed Aircraft Corp., 1959 [348], p. 34-35.

263 Schultz and Schwartz, 1963 [511], p. 422.

2M Brownson, 1957 [83], p. 99-100.

67
"Indexers and searchers have in the past got

along without such a tool—or, rather, each has

used the network of word associations in his own

mind, aided perhaps by a dictionary, as a personal

thesaurus. It is in contemplating the possible

mechanization of indexing that the need for this

tool has been recognized. Passage from text-words

to key-words can be achieved by machine only if such word associations have been previously stored

in its memory." 265 The question of where and when the use of a thesaurus-type device to provide greater vocabulary compatibility or convertibility was first proposed, and by whom, is an elusive one. Vickery

writing in 1960 [614] on "thesaurus" as a new

word in documentation, discusses prior usage by

Brownson (1957 [84], Luhn 1957 [360], 1959

[352]), Bernier and Heumann (1957 [56]), and

Taube (1955 [561] ), the latter for the idea of both

indexers and searchers referring to word-association lists. Vickery further discusses usage of the

word by Americans, ignoring the emphasis in the

Cambridge Language Research Unit on thesauruslike approaches to both mechanized translation

and information retrieval from at least as early as 1956 onward.263a T. M. Williams in a private communication to H. L. Brownson dated August 2, 1961, cited her

own use of the word in the Avion report of November 1956 (Williams, 1956 [648]) and of less formal usage both in oral presentations and in cor- respondence with Bernier during 1953-54. Williams also notes that Bernier may well have implied the functional concept, although without the use of the specific term, in unpublished papers

given in 1953 and 1948.

Luhn is credited by de Grolier with having advocated, at least as early as 1951, a thesaurus

method : ". . . The process of 'broadening the concept' which he described was linked, in an interesting manner, to research strategy, and he proposed

the compilation of a dictionary of notions where

each of the specific terms not retained for indexing would appear under as many headings as nec- essary to represent it by the different 'key terms' where it would thus be indexed. Such a dictionary is very similar, in fact, to the Thesaurus of

English Words and Phrases by Peter Mark Roget . . . and since that time it has been the custom

to refer to the thesaurus method." 266 In November 1951, Mooers issued his Zator

Technical Bulletin Number 65 (1951 [394]), not- ing in the preface that it was substantially the same as a paper informally circulated to members

of the Punched Card Committee of the American

Chemical Society in February 1947. In it, he

states: "To surmount this problem of alternative

expression, there must be a word book or encyclo285 Vickery, 1960 [619], p. 183.

z** Masterman, 1956 [374] and Parker-Rhodes, 1956 [446].

268 de Grolier, 1962 [170], p. 109, 187-188 cites Luhn (1953

[358]) as having first appeared as Appendix I (dated 10 Sep

1951) to an unpublished IBM report (Luhn, 1952 [356]). 68

pedic source of volcabulary having features com- i mon to a thesaurus, a dictionary, and an encyclopedia." 267 Finally, in addition to these "anteriorities" of

discussions of proposed thesaurus-type functions

without the use of the term and of linkages of the

term to proposed functions, a reference appeared

in 1954, in Appendix III of the Bush Committee

Report: "Then there might be a large index and

cross-reference file, adaptable to frequent addition,

revision and reorganization. This file should be \ capable of rapid data processing and access. It \ might include a thesaurus so that the processing

machine itself can translate search inquiries from

a variety of sources into a standardized machine J language, and so that changing terminology may

be readily incorporated into the search and re- trieval procedure." 208 The term "thesaurus" has also been applied to the somewhat narrower concept of an authority

list incorporating syndetic devices including "generic to" or "specific to" cross-references. Such

tools are provided by AIChE, by DDC, and by I EJC, in their respective thesauri.

"Probably the most outstanding [of the solu- tions developed for control of synonyms] is the

thesaurus approach, which has been very success- fully used by Dr. Fred Wlialey at Linde Air Products Laboratories . . . and by the Engineering

Information Center in . . . the DuPont company.

Thesauri may be created in several ways, one of

which is the Committee approach to consideration j of vocabulary, a typical product of which is iden- i tification and definition of synonyms and near- synonyms . . . The thesaurus approach can solve

the problem of generics as well as the problems of

viewpoint and semantics. The indexer can refer | to his thesaurus for the terms he has selected and

from the appropriate lists under each term, select those associated terms which refer to generically

higher concepts appropriate for indexing the information more broadly." 269 Wall wrote about "information retrieval thesauri" under the sponsorship of the Engineers

Joint Council in 1962, saying that such referents

as a thesaurus for information retrieval and Roj get's international thesaurus serve their users "for

similar immediate purposes and in approximately \ similar fashions. Both users wish to identify

terms 'related' in some manner to a term or terms

they have already thought of. Both users look

up alphabetically the terms already in mind. . . . Each user observes that some of the related terms

j found are of interest to him at the moment and

some are not. Each user may use some related | terms which are of interest to him as 're-entry'

207 Mooers, 1951 [394], p. 14.

268 U.S. Department of Commerce, 1954 [596], p. 63. It should

be reported, however, that Stevens when compiling material for

this Appendix had access to both the Mooers 1951 Bulletin [394] and to the Luhn 19-52 report [356] the latter having been

included in the list of selected references, p. 76.

266 Costello, 1961 [138], p. 22-23.
I points in his thesaurus to find other terms of in- terest." 270 He wrote again about an information

retrieval thesaurus, that "it must certainly list the

, terms of the system vocabulary. It must exhibit

relationships among these terms . . . relations ships such as synonymy, hierarchy, and relation5 ships which may indicate synonymy or hierarchy

from some points-of-view but not generally. It

? should define the vocabulary terms to the extent

1 required." 271 Herner, writing about the possibilities for conJ vergence of word and concept indexing through

the intermediary of the thesaurus, expresses the

'

1 hope "that designers and users of indexing vocab1 ularies will recognize this—if they haven't al-

] ready—as a very basic purpose for thesauri, subject

authorities, indexing dictionaries, or whatever

name we give them. He gives examples where

"thesauri and similar indexing authorities have

1 been used as means of converting words or symbols

and groups of words or symbols into concepts." 272 This, then, is the general setting for the current usage of the term in this country and by some of

the agencies of the U.S. Government.

Taube suggests that ASTIA and "several other

organizations and individuals have continued to

insist that in 'thesauri' there are provided struc- tures of connections between words which are necessary to ensure satisfactory operation of mechanized systems of coordinate indexing." He then

asks, "Is a thesaurus or any authority list an

independent semantic standard for an indexing

system set up by a process of lexicography, or is it a description of a particular indexing system as developed from a concatenation of subject competence, the literature being indexed, and the re- quirements for efficient machine search?" 273 Taube claims "that a cross reference structure of

any complexity can be derived from, and need not

be prescribed for, any given indexing system.

! Further, if ... a descriptive structure contains

cross references which reflect the extensive rela- 1 tion of classes of items rather than prescriptive

semantic relations of terms, there is no real

problem of compatibility between descriptive

systems." 274 He suggests further that for revising its first thesaurus ASTIA should have printed out the

terms and postings recorded during the indexing

operation following the appearance of the edition.

From this document there could "be derived all necessary 'see' references and references to indicate

the inclusion of one class in another. For studying

the relations which are basic to 'see also' references,

it is necessary to have a printout of the tracings.

I . . . If any two terms have identical postings, a

'see also' reference from one to the other is re- dundant and wasteful. In such a case, one set of

270 Wall, 1962 [623], p. 7.

2.1 Wall, 1963 [625], p. 38.

2.2 Herner, 1963 [256}, p. 1S3.

273 Taube, 1963 [558], p. 177.

2,4 Ibid, p. 178.

208-371—66 6

postings should be eliminated and a 'see' reference

substituted for the 'see also' reference." 275 A final interesting comment is that of Cleverdon

and Mills : "Work on thesauri and classifications,

where it has been practical in nature, appears to

consist of compiling lists of terms which go out of

favor as quickly as any list of subject headings in

the past . . . ." 276 Turning now to established thesauri, we note

first the ASTIA thesauri. Heald states that the

purpose of Project MARS (il/^lchine Retrieval

System) was to prepare a thesaurus of scientific descriptors from the 70,000 ASTIA subject headings and to assign descriptors to all AD-numbered

reports in the ASTIA collection.277 The subject

headings in the 1959 volume were divorced from

their subdivisions, about 150 subdivisions were

eliminated, and some subdivisions were included

"in other headings as synonymous or definitive terms." 278 The almost 7,000 descriptors were "divided into a number of generic groups for display

purposes. Hence, the full scope of the subject

coverage is divided into about 290 major

categories." 279 Slamecka comments on the grouping of indexing

terms: "Classification may be exhibited in a

thesaurus in two ways ; through relationships . . . among terms and through grouping terms into

categories. The latter device is very helpful if the indexing environment is very broad, as it is in

the subject field interests of ASTIA." 280 The

number of "descriptor groups" in the first ASTIA

Thesaurus is actually 292, and we shall see that

they have been used in experimentation for con- verting one indexing language into another. The

first edition of the ASTIA Thesaurus was revised

in late 1961 and 1962 under a contract between the

Engineers Joint Council and ASTIA, the second

edition appearing in December 1962. Of interest

here are the experiences of a worker with the first edition.

Hicks reported her experiences with government-sponsored research reports in areas of physical chemistry to the Division of Chemical Litera- ture of the American Chemical Society in May

1962. One of her searches was on the Dissociation

and recomhination kinetics of hydrogen, the

halogens, and the hydrogen halides. Machine

searches at ASTIA headquarters yielded 82 pertinent ASTIA reports. Manual search was made

of the subject files in the ASTIA Los Angeles

2,5 Taube, 1963 [558], p. 179. Note that In the chemical engi- neering thesaurus (to be discussed below in the section on AIChE and EJC thesauri), the terminology "RT" for related terms is used instead of "see also." Taube (Ibid. p. 180) re- marks that "Even authority lists for manual catalogs have

difficulty with 'see also' references unless they are restricted to references from general to more specific classes ; and what

emerges from this analysis is the thesis that the notion of 're- lated term' as an explanation of 'see also' references is too vague

to be significant either to the indexer or the searcher In a

mechanized system."

276 Cleverdon, 19|62 [124 ]i, p. 1.

277 Heald, 1960 [243];, p. 117.

278 Ibid.

279 Ibid, p. 119.

280 Slamecka, 1963 [534], p. 227.

69
Regional Office for reports from 1953 to the end

of 1959, and selected sections were examined page

by page. By manual searching, 242 reports were

found. Three reasons were ascribed for the dis- parity in the number of items found: "(1) inaccuracies and insufficient depth of indexing at ASTIA; (2) manual location of relevant reports

which we had not anticipated finding and which we had not asked the machine to find ; ( 3) less than

optimum prescription of retrieval terms on our

part." 281 Hicks' second example was Vacuum ultraviolet

photolysis of organic compounds. She manually

searched TAB for 1960-1961, finding 23 reports on vacuum ultraviolet photolysis of various compounds. She comments that it was apparent "that

the easiest way to assuring nearly complete re- trieval of these reports would be to prescribe one

descriptor only, Photolysis, requiring manual

screening of at least 112 cards or examination of

at least four times as many cards as those found

pertinent. Because of underassignment of terms,

complete retrieval of these 23 reports would re- quire programming for all reports assigned Photolysis, plus all of the reports assigned Ultraviolet

radiation but not Photolysis, plus all of the reports

assigned Photochemical reactions but not Photolysis or Ultraviolet radiation. The percentage of

irrelevant information would be quite high." 282 The First Revision of the Thesaurus of ASTIA

Descriptors, written bv Eugene Wall and issued

by ASTIA August 6, 1962 [622] , is the final report on the contract between ASTIA and the Engineers

Joint Council (EJC) . This report states that the

purpose of the revision was "to create for ASTIA

an improved indexing and retrieval authority,

based upon Edition I of the Thesaurus, and to insure that this authority would be as useful as possible to organizations other than ASTIA.'''''283 The descriptors in the first edition were reviewed

for deletion or addition, "for elimination of synonymous terms, for provision of extensive cross- referencing, for addition of scope notes to those

descriptors needing such treatment, and for assignment of descriptors to subject-matter fields-of- interest. To achieve compatibility with other

operating systems, it was necessary to call on the

advice of dozens of other systems operators and

subject-matter specialists . . . ." 284 The greater portion of the second ASTIA

Thesaurus is the scope note index, which lists the

descriptors and use references in alphabetical

order. The indexing terms or descriptors are again arranged into descriptor groups, now re- duced to 170 in number, which are themselves

arranged into descriptor fields (increased in number from 19 to 26) covering the AD collection in

terms of subject matter disciplines. A new fea- ture is the display of generic relationships for

281 Hicks, 1963 [260], p. 145.

282 Hicks, 1963 [260], p. 146.

283 Wall, 1962 [622],, p. 1.

284 Ibid.

some descriptors in terms of "specific to" and "generic to" entries. The ASTIA Chemical Thesaurus, a supplement

to the Thesaurus of ASTIA Descriptors, second

edition, has fragment descriptors and specific

guidelines for indexing organic compounds. The

fragment descriptors designate the functional

groups and the substituted groups, radicals, or ions

of the molecular structure of the compound. The

reasoning of the editors was that compounds such

as drugs, biologicals, enzymes, and vitamins should

be indexed by these appropriate terms when their

chemical structure was not under study. The in- troduction to the chemical thesaurus states that the

system is intended to entail "coding the chemical

structures in a given document into one code for- mat without the use of links, interfixes, or other

devices for keeping the information separated.

Thus, when chemical structures are composited, a new structure that contains all of the characteristics of the individual compounds appearing in

the document is generated within the code

sheet." 285 By November 15, 1963. eleven "microthesauri"

had been compiled by ASTIA-DDC in the following subject areas: biological warfare, bionics,

chemical rocket propulsion systems, masers, microbiology, physical oceanography, psychophysiology, radiobiology, refractory metals, semiconductor devices, and ultraviolet and infrared detection.

These were compiled in order to allow more detailed categorization of information than per- mitted by the regular Thesaurus. In order to make these microthesauri have "general acceptability and compatibility" contributions and criti- cisms from experts outside ASTIA were requested.

DDC is currently making possible (as of October

1963) rapid telephone search service in these dis- ciplines to organizations having an approved

Field-of-Interest Register (FOIR) atDDC.

An early effort by a professional organization

to compile thesauri has made considerable impact.

The first part of the Chemical Engineering Thesaurus, published by the American Institute of

Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in 1961 as "a wordbook for use with the concept coordination system

of information storage and retrieval" ( [18] )

, lists terms of a chemical engineering nature, and the

second part lists purely chemical terms. The Chemical Engineering Thesaurus was developed from one originally prepared by the Engineering Dept. of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.

Each term of the thesaurus was reviewed for ge- neric relationships and semantics, as well as its suitability for inclusion, by a subcommittee of the

AIChE Standards Committee.

The types of references used under the terms are

different. For example, since ethyl alcohol is not a term in the thesaurus, it is merely listed alphabetically in the second part as Ethyl alcohol see Ethanol. Under Ethanol there are two notations

285 Defense Documentation Center, 1962 [162], p. 1.

70
SF Ethyl alcohol (meaning that the person perusing Ethyl alcohol has been told to see (seen from)

Ethanol) and PO Alcohols (meaning that Ethanol has been "posted onto" the term Alcohols,

thereby causing the latter to bear the notation G

Ethanol). This indicates that Alcohols are "generic to" Ethanol and a great many other alcohols,

that to be truly all inclusive any document having

information on ethanol may be regarded as having

information on alcohols as well. Another notation

is RT, applied to "terms which have a similar

meaning or a frequent association with the main

term, but which are not strict generics or synonyms . . ." 286 meaning that they are "Related

Terms." For example, Flameproofing has two RT

listings under it, Protection and Safety. Under

Protection, similarly, there is the reference RT

Flameproofing but not RT Safety, while Safety

has RT's to both Flameproofing and Protection.

These "related terms" are similar to "see also" terms. As partial explanatory text to the Chemical Engineering Thesaurus there are included two articles

reprinted from the May and June 1961 issues of

the periodical Chemical Engineering Progress;

Morse states that these issues "will form the

AIChE Information Retrieval Standards . . . ." 287 Morse also illustrates the use of keywords and

catalog cards in concept coordination and the application of links and roles. He states that

"numerals (links) define groups of key words that were linked with one another in the original article. . . . The letters (roles) after each key word

designate a code implying the way the key words

were used—that is, the role of the key word in the

original article," 288 for example, whether a specific

chemical was used as a raw material, catalyst, in- termediate, or product.

Holm in the June 1961 Chemical Engineering

Progress gives a "how-to-do-it" explanation of the

program initiated that month by the AIChE. The

program was for retrieving technical literature in a publication where each technical article published was accompanied by both an abstract and

key words supplied by the author. He considers

that use of this system will be helpful to three types

of users: the individual chemical engineer who

needs a small personal file of minimum complexity; the medium-size organization with broader

interests ; and the large organization serving many

people with wide interests. 289 These activities of the AIChE led to the EJC

sponsorship of a symposium in New York City in

January 1962. The purpose of the symposium

was to consider how the engineer might improve

his ability to retrieve recorded information. The

proceedings of that symposium contain addresses on (1) the size of the problem of storing and re- trieving technical information, (2) the technology

286 American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1961 [18], p. II.

281 Morse, 1961 [399], p. 58.

288 Ibid, p. 57-58.

289 Holm, 1961 [268], p. 76-77.

used to attack the problem, (3) working systems

for retrieval, and (4) a two-part "action plan"

for the abstracting and indexing of technical articles and books of lasting value concomitantly with

their publication, and the creation of a single

"Thesaurus of Engineering Terminology" for all branches of engineering. The "EJC Action Plan"

stated that the cost for creating this thesaurus

"will be relatively small because of the work al- ready done on the Chemical Engineering Thesaurus and the steps already taken to insure compatibility with the new ASTIA Thesaurus." 290 The EJC was given a grant by the National

Science Foundation under which Eugene Wall, as Director of Information Services, conducted a "study of engineering terminology and relationships among engineering terms." The final report on the EJC study (August 1963, [186]) noted 18

contributors who responded to the request made to the national professional engineering societies and

other organizations, "to submit any subject heading lists, thesauri, glossaries, or any other item

lists which they employ as indexing authorities or which they consider useful for that purpose. . . . These eighteen contributors submitted

about 119,000 terms, of which 87,550 were

'unique.'

291 The EJC Engineering Terminology Study Committee of 131 members, dividing itself into ten subcommittees, gave volunteer and detailed assist- ance in the research effort. "Twenty-seven subcommittee meetings were held, full-time for one week per meeting; 130 man-weeks of volunteer

assistance were provided by the subcommittees ... A total of about 10,500 terms were

treated during this period. A 1000 term sample of

this proposed vocabulary was analyzed and from

the results of the analysis, the following conclusions are drawn: (1) The investigational procedures used during the study were appropriate.

(2) Overlap of term usage within the engineering

profession is significant (74%). (3)_ Ambiguities

m term meanings within the engineering profession

are fairly frequent (8%), but are easily resolved.

(4) Most terms of any major degree of interest to even one portion of the engineering profession

have been detected and considered. (5) It is feasible to provide a unified vocabulary for use by the entire engineering profession." 292 The Medical and Health Related Sciences Thesaurus, issued in March 1963 by the Division of

Research Grants of the National Institutes of

Health, was developed during 1960-62 simultaneously with the preparation of the initial annual

Research Grants Index, a subject-matter index of

research projects supported by the Public Health

Service. This thesaurus has 12,200 terms and

groups of related categories of information as con- venient broad access points for related concepts.

280 Ibid. p. 76.

291 Engineers Joint Council. 1963 [186], p. 2-3.

282 Engineers Joint Council, 1963 [186]i, p. 1.

71
The groupings include (1) subheadings of three

general kinds, subordinates of body systems or

functional units of body systems, terms for com- monly accepted functional attributes, and taxo- nomic terms for collecting related information al- though the taxonomic arrangement is nonhierarchial; (2) alphabetical groupings for "tied

terms" of related data, for example, Radiolabeled

arsenic and Radiolabeled carbon instead of the more exact Radio-arsenic labeled and Radiocarbon labeled, respectively; and (3) indication by

cross reference, rather than subheading, for the

relationship of terms which would constitute an

arbitrary grouping. For example, Epinephrins is made a main term with cross references to it from

both /Sympathomimetic agents and Catecholamines, rather than having these terms grouped

arbitrarily under drugs.

The National Library of Medicine issued the

second edition of Medical Subject Headings, as part of its January 1963 Index Medicus; the subject headings include the main headings and cross references used in Index Medicus and the National

Library of Medicine catalog. Although the volume is not termed a thesaurus, it contains a total of some 5,700 "descriptors", Another listing of

these descriptors by 13 categories is appended, the

categorization of terms being intended "as an

ordering of terms to suggest relationships, not as an official classification. . . ." 293 Each subcategory list is preceded by a group of major generic

headings under which most of the terms within

the category will fall ; they serve as guides to the

materials in the list. Two thesauri were prepared in late 1963 -by

other U.S. Government agencies. The Bureau of

Reclamation in Denver prepared the tentative edition of its Thesaurus of Descriptors : A List of

Keytoords and Cross-references for Indexing and

Retrieving the Literature of Water Resources Development in October 1963. Camp ([599]) of the

Technical Library of the Bureau of Ships completed the compilation of a Thesaurus of Descriptive Terms and Code Booh for the Bureau in December 1963. The Bureau of Reclamation

Thesaurus of Descriptors is presented in three

parts. Part I is an alphabetical list of descriptors

and "use references", which constitute the main

indexing and retrieval tool. Part II gives first a listing of 47 descriptor groups, arranged alphabetically, with indication of that descriptor "field" to which each group belongs, and then gives a

listing of the descriptors pertaining to each group.

Part III lists the six descriptor fields and then the

descriptor groups pertaining to each field. These

fields are civil engineering; earth sciences and

agriculture; electrical, mechanical, and industrial

engineering; materials engineering; physical,

chemical, and biological sciences; and social sci- ences and miscellaneous.

National Library of Medicine, 1963 [411], p. vi.

The Thesaurus of the Bureau of Ships was developed for use in conjunction with Project

SHARP (SH'vp Analysis and Retrieval Project), a cooperative project between the Technical

Library and the Applied Mathematics Laboratory

of the David Taylor Model Basin for the design

and testing of an automated information storage

and retrieval system for the Library's collection of

170,000 reports, using the IBM 7090 and 1401 computer facilities at the Laboratory. This thesaurus

is "a word-association list generically structured

to enable indexers and subject analysts to describe

the subject information of a document to the desired level of generality or specificity at input, and

to permit searchers to describe in mutually precise

terms the information required at output. It is a

flexible authority list for vocabulary control with

provision for the use of terms in combination, for

concept coordination, in contrast to standard li- brary subject heading lists which do not permit

this degree of flexibility." 294 The method of in- dexing of the EJC was used for "facilitating the

formal manipulation of document descriptions and

queries by computer." 295 Finally, we reemphasize the reported close kinship between the modern thesauri and the more

traditional subject authority lists. Thus, "One of

the keystones of the entire [MEDLARS] system

is the subject heading authority list, Medical Subject Headings . . . the 1st edition . . . was carefully compiled in 1959 ... to prepare for the

computerized retrieval system, the fidl scale re- vision of this list was initiated. The huge task of

converting 4400 main headings and sixty-seven

standard topical subheadings contained in the 1959

list into a 5700 main heading system with no

topical subheadings was completed in October 1962

and published in January 1963. The cross-referj ence structure was augmented by a completely

categorized arrangement of the main headings in

addition to the purely alphabetically ordered

listing." 296

3.7.2. Classification Schemes

The search for a systematic classification of all knowledge has had a venerable but erratic his- tory, reaching back at least to the Aristotelian

categories. Vickery indicates that the "subsequent J history of classification has been the attempt to find a new rational system of the sciences to re- place that of Aristotle. . . ." 297 He points out, j however, that "history presents a series of cultural

epochs. Each is a span of years within which

knowledge presents a more or less unified struc- ture which can be expressed in a classification,

but each new epoch requires a new classificaj tion . . . Indeed, the better fitted a classification

;

2" Bureau of Ships, 1963 [600], p. vi-vii.

295 Ibid, p. iii.

29«Taine, 1964 [552], p. 123.

297 Viekery, 1959 [610], p. 159. 72
is to a given epoch, the less suitable will it be for

any other epoch." 298 Similarly, Shera suggests that : "Even a cursory

examination of the history of the classification of

the sciences emphasizes the extent to which any

attempt to organize knowledge is conditioned by

the social epistemology of the age in which it was

produced. This dependence of classification

theory upon the state of the sociology of knowledge will doubtless be even more strongly con- firmed in the future. . . ." 299 Pings is among those who are convinced that

universal classification is untenable because each

science or discipline develops its own ways of un- derstanding the elements of that discipline, and

that to generalize a method for covering all sciences or disciplines would lead to confusion of

terminology and ideas. He states: "A standardized vocabulary can only be a universal classifica- tion scheme if both the subject content and the

language are dead. It is quite possible that all the knowledge and events of the Roman Empire

could be classified in Latin. The significant and

erroneous knowledge of these centuries found its way into the language. The efforts of bibliographers to standardize language only compounds

the natural property of language to keep pace

with the experiences of man." 300 Nevertheless, since at least the seventeenth cen- tury and earlier, general purpose or universal purpose classification schemes have been developed

and applied to problems of bibliographic control

and to the ordering of books and documents on

shelves. Early examples are cited by Shera as follows : "Bacon's scheme influenced the early clas- sification system of the Bodleian Library. Thomas

Jefferson founded upon it the classification for his

own books and from this it was absorbed into the

plan of book arrangement at the Library of Congress, where it was employed, with modifications,

for almost a century. In inverted form it was

used by William T. Harris, from whom Melvil

Dewey took it for his own Decimal system. . . . The classification devised by Konrad Gesner for

the organization of his Pandectarium sive partitionum universalivm, [was] considered by Edwards to be the first bibliographic system, and

certainly the greatest early attempt to relate the

subject arrangement of books to the educational

and scientific consensus of the day." 301 In this section we shall consider some of the

major schemes that have been devised since the

middle of the nineteenth century and that use a numeric or alphabetic notation for the classified organization of information.

The decimal classification of Melvil Dewey, first published in 1876, has had a marked influence on

schemes for classifying books and is used by most

of the public libraries in this country. The 1951

293 Ibid, p. 158.

299 Shera, 1951 [523], p. 82.

800 Pings, 1960 [458], p. 12.

301 Shera, 1951 [523], p. 74, 75. 76.

edition of the Dewey Decimal Classification, the

15th, was compiled within the Library of Congress, to be succeeded by the 16th edition published by the Lake Placid Club in 1958 (Dewey

1958 [174]). Besides its extensive use in public

libraries, the Dewey Decimal Classification has

served as the basis for the Universal Decimal

Classification (UDC) which has become the widely

used European classification for libraries and for

denoting the subject categories of articles in scientific periodicals. Because of its acceptance in

many areas as a common classification language

and because it is has been established and is maintained as an international cooperative effort, the

UDC will be discussed in more detail below.

First, however, we will consider briefly other approaches to universal or general purpose classifi- cation systems.

C. A. Cutter compiled a series of seven successive classification schemes, each an expansion of

the other. Cutter did not approve of the notation

or order of Dewey's classification and worked out

a new order which he claimed to be evolutionary

within its divisions and which used for notation

the letters of the alphabet and numbers one to nine.

An outline was published in 1879. When the Expansive Classification, Part I: The First Six

Classifications, 1891-1893, appeared, it was designed for collections of every size "from the vil- lage library in its earliest stages to the national

library with a million books." The LC classifi- cation was influenced considerably by Cutter's work.

Cutter also published his Table, alphabetical

order schemes consisting of decimal numbers so constructed that they may be combined with initial letter or letters of surname or words, thereby

supplying an alphabetical method for arranging

items in a file and books on the shelves by the names of the author or originator. The Cutter

numbers, or some variant thereof, are used extensively today. The best known of these variants is the Library of Congress Classification. "Starting

in 1901, the classification system of the Library of

Congress (LC) began to appear .... This is a system of traditional type ; it is entirely enumerative, and it would be useless to seek therein an

expression of general categories: Specific subjects

only will be found. Fundamentally, it is, after an interval of two centuries and a half, an undertaking very similar to that of the great librarians

of the Bibliotheque Mazarine, and later those of

the Royal Library in Paris, i.e., a careful and

detailed arrangement of the greatest collection of

books in the world, on the basis of groupings of

the latter, let us say by affinities.'' 302 Landau records that "Dr. Herbert Putnam was

appointed Librarian [of Congress] in 1899 and

brought to fruition the gigantic task of arranging a great national library according to a modern classification. It is doubtful if such a project

303 de Grolier, 1962 [170], p. 43-

73
can ever be completed .... Thus, the [LC Classification] scheme itself, while most scholarly in

detail, does not pretend to have any but the loosest connection between its main classes. . . . The

schedules consist of a series of separate main

classes each of which has its own relative index.

There is no index to the whole, but the list of

Subject Headings Used in the Dictionary Catalogues of the Library of Congress can be a substitute." 303 These limiting characteristics must

be taken into account when considering schemes

for classifying or indexing information for

mechanized storage and retrieval of information.

Similarly, in view of some of the problems and

difficulties of melding central services with more

specialized needs, it might be noted here that it was found "... impossible . . . for the Library

of Congress to modify its medical classification

sufficiently to persuade the Army Medical Library ... to refrain from developing its own

system. Probably both libraries were correct in

their respective decisions . . . ." 304 Still another example of a traditional enumerative type of classification scheme is that of Bliss

([65]). _ "In 1910, Henry Evelyn Bliss published

in the Library Joumal 'A modern classification of

libraries, with simple notation, mnemonics, and

alternatives.' The 'Bibliographic Classification'

. . . did not, however, begin to appear in abridged

form until 1935 . . . Bliss developed the use of

auxiliary tables (systematic auxiliary schedules)

. . . He recognized also, in a certain measure, the

inadequate character of a classification system in

which the main classes are based on disciplines

and not on subjects studied, and established numerous 'alternative locations,' so that the same

complex science could be placed in several different

classes ... It was only in 1948, perhaps under

the influence of Banganathan's ideas, that he advocated the use of relationship signs." 305 Faceted classification schemes, and especially

the prototype Colon Classification of Banganathan, are directed both to multi-aspects identification of subject content, reflecting different possible

approaches, and to improvements in notation.

Speaking to the latter point, Banganathan himself

has discussed limitations of prior notation schemes

and the solution of rigidities as follows: ". . . the field of knowledge soon outwits even the clev- erest guess about the gap that should be left between any two integers brought into use at the

time of designing the classification. It often happens that certain gaps do not get filled up_ at all, while certain others soon get glutted and it is in

these glutted regions that newer and newer specific

subjects come up. ...

"... Bigidity was first broken by the simple

device of numbering the known specific subjects,

not by consecutive integers, but by nonconsecutive

303 Landau, 1958 [327], p. 189. Note however, that an index

to each volume is provided.

304 Evans, 1963 [188], p. 15.

305 de Grolier, 1962 [170], p. 43.

74

ones leaving a reasonable number of unused

integers between them—by gap notation, so to speak. . . . "The greatest forward step in classification was

taken less than a century ago by one whom I always

call the 'Father of Modern Librarianship'—Melvil

Dewey. He broke the second rigidity in notation ... by abandoning the use of integers altogether

and introducing pure decimal-fraction-notation

. . . [which] provides for infinite hospitality." 306 Banganathan points out further, however, that

"hospitality of notation has to be two-fold—in

chain and in array" and that ". . . in a faceted j notation—in the Colon Classification—a class number can grow not only at its end but also at the end of each of its facets." 307 The multi-aspect subject approach of Colon and

faceted classification has been summarized by

Vickery as follows : "The first explicit use of cat- egories in classification was made by Banganathan. j His Colon Classification exhibited from the start a division of classes into facets or categories. For

example, in his main class Medicine, before start- ing a family tree subdivision, Banganathan first formed two groups of terms: organ (e.g. femur,

diaphragm, blood, eye, tooth) and 'problem' (e.g.,

morphology, physiology, disease, hygiene). . . . "Banganathan also found the need to introduce other groups of terms, to express the symptoms of disease (e.g., fever, inflammation), its agents (e.g., virus, bacteria, poison) and its handling (e.g., surgery, diet, nursing, therapy).

He was thus able to form compound headings of

the type FEMUB—MABBOW INFLAMMATION (OSTEOMYELITIS)—PHABMACOTHEBAPY .... The Colon Classification, by

dividing its terms into categories or facets, and

making notational provision for linking facets

together, was thus able ... to bring together

terms [in coordinate relationships]. By prescribing a fixed combination order for the facets, the

classification settled the problems which worried

Cutter and Miss Prevost." 308 Other remarks may be noted here which are

related to the notion of universal classification

schemes. The possibility of a systematic classifi- ( cation of all of knowledge, of course, has been an

enticing activity as long as there has been re- corded knowledge at all. Ball suggested in 1947

a "National Library of Science, patterned after

the present Library of the Department of Agriculture, with facilities organized on a scale to embrace all of the fields of scientific and technical

effort. ... A system of classification such as is used in the Patent Office, integrated perhaps with

the Universal Decimal System, could serve as a

basic framework on which to build a really effec- tive system of technical and scientific classifica- tion. Such a system would justify a corps of

30l> Ranganathan, 1951 [468]i, p. 98.

307 Ranganathan, 1951 [468], p. 100.

308 Vickery, 1959 [610], p. 12-13.
I specialists continually supervising its development

i in accordance with the needs of scientific and technical workers using it. A council of recognized

i leaders in the major fields of science and technology should meet at periodic intervals to study

proposed revisions and guide the efforts of the

staff to maintain the system effective and acceptable to all concerned." 309 Newman followed with the suggestion that the

classified files of the U.S. Patent Office could be

used as a basis for the classification of technology.

He suggests that the existing system might be en- larged to include theoretical science (1961 [420]).

He noted later that "Classification experts believe

that the best classifications for documentation are those which classify differences. . . . Since each

patent contains one or more claims which precisely

define the advance made by the inventor in rela- tion to that which was heretofore known, the

ability to create an hierarchical classification by

the differences between claims is possible. Furthermore, the subclasses of this classification often

utilize relationships between concepts to set out

these differences. It is clearly demonstrable that,

when looking for related information, the specific

relationship of the elements of a 'thing' is many

times more important and fruitful than the specific details of the elements so related." 310 These

characteristics of the Patent Office classification

scheme permit dynamic revisions in meeting

changing needs and emphases.

Wahlin of Sweden (1963 [614] ) proposed a universal system of classification based on fundamental concepts arranged with consideration to

their generic relations. His Ideal Universal System (IUS) has such groupings as abstract basic

concepts (number, space, time, motion, force,

mass) ; energy and matter; the universe and the

) earth; physical life; the individual; society; material civilization; intellectual culture; and countries and people. These concepts are those com- monly given as the "subjects" of the various fields of knowledge. He has also developed a variant

system, the Technical Universal System (TUS)

that is adapted to engineering and technology.

"Here those branches of engineering and technology which constitute applications of some elementary fundamental concepts (e.g., electrotechnics) are combined with these fundamental concepts,

theory and practice keeping each other company

to an increasingly low level the more specialized

the concept and its application are." 311 Foskett reports that the Classification Research

Group of England has met nearly every month

since 1952 "with no resources beyond the native

wit of its members, no allegiance to any existing

system of classification, no fixed target . . . ." The group published a memorandum in July 1955,

concluding "that any subject index, alphabetical,

309 Ball, 1947 [44], p. 35.

310 Newman. 19fil T424], p. 208.

311 Wahlin, 1963 [619], p. 185-186.

classified or mechanical, relies for its efficiency on the coordination of concepts or ideas expressed

in documents, so that a set of concepts stated as the requirement of a research worker can be

matched with the same or similar sets already

existing in the library or information system." 312 Foskett further states that although the Group

rejected all existing schemes it "decided to adopt

at least some of the Colon terminology and

method" of S. R. Ranganathan. The Group

adopted the term " 'facet' ... to describe the homogeneous groups of terms that result from dividing a subject into its appropriate categories. It did not seem, however, that Ranganathan's principle of deriving the facets of a subject by their

relation to five 'fundamental' categories (Personality, Matter, Energy, Space, and Time) offered

,a wholly reliable extension of the idea of cate- gories, and the CRG has never accepted this as a general theory . . . ." 313 Turning now to the Universal Decimal Classification, we note first that it was developed by the

International Institute of Bibliography (established in 1895, later to become the FID). Under

the direction of Paul Otlet and Henri LaFontaine,

the objective was to develop for purposes of bibli- ographical control a comprehensive word repertory

for the organization of knowledge. "After ex- amining existing systems, Otlet and LaFontaine

concluded that the Dewey Decimal Classification

. . . offered the most promising basis. . . . Permission to modify and expand his scheme was obtained from Dewey on condition that the order of

main classes and divisions be maintained and that

maximum compatibility in development be

sought. . . . "The new scheme, the Classification Decimale

(CD), was first published in a complete international edition (in French) in 1905 as the 'Manuel

du repertoire bibliographique universel.' From

1927 onwards, further full international editions,

embodying the fruits of international cooperation

in additions and revisions, appeared in French,

German, and English together with numerous

abridged editions in these and other languages." 314 "While UDC has been widely accepted abroad,

with a few notable exceptions it has not been as generally received or used in the United States. The collection of the Engineering Societies Library is classified according to UDC, somewhat

modified. G. K. Hall & Co. of Boston announced

in late 1963 the publication in 13 volumes of the

classed subject catalog of the library. The direc- tor of the library, Ralph H. Phelps states in the

announcement that the library with its 180,000

volumes "acts both as an archive for the older

material and as a working library of current in- formation, primarily for the graduate and practicing engineer, but also for the engineering stu- dent, as well as other persons needing technical

312 Foskett, 1962 [199], p. 127.

313 Ibid, p. 128.

314 Mills, 1964 [388]], p. 9.

75
information." The published catalog has 212,400

cards and its index 27,300 cards.

Additionally, the John Crerar Library, the Library of the U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake, the Technology Department of the

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, the U.S. Weather

Bureau Library, the Library of the Housing and

Home Finance Agency, the Columbus Memorial

Library in Washington, and (understandably) the

United Nations Library in New York are among

the organizations that use the UDC classification

scheme.

The general introduction to the abridged English edition of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), published by the British Standards

Institution (1961 [82]), states that the UDC "is a scheme for classifying the whole field of knowledge." Further, there are three basic principles

involved in its construction and use: (1) It is a

classification, "depending on the analysis of idea

content, so that related concepts and groups of

concepts are brought together. . . ." (2) It is a

universal classification where the "universality at the conceptual level is supported by notational devices, which permit the linking of simple main

numbers (for simple ideas) either with other main

numbers or with auxiliaries denoting Place, Time,

and similar commonly recurring categories—in

each case forming combined or compound numbers." (3) It is a universal decimal classification

"proceeding from the general to the more particular by the (arbitrary) division of the whole of

human knowledge into ten main branches, each

further subdivided decimally to the required

degree."

The first volume of a new series on the Intellectual Organization of Information being prepared under the aegis of the Rutgers Library

School (Mills, 1964 [388]) provides a comprehensive study of the UDC, clarifies many of the com- mon misconceptions about it, and highlights both

advantages and disadvantages of such a universal

classification scheme. Mills emphasizes that while

the UDC is usually employed in systems involving conventional card catalogs or book-form in- dexes it can be used in term-entry as well as itementry systems 315 and that it can be adapted to mechanization in several ways: "(1) It provides

a carefully organized and very comprehensive vo- cabulary of terms, providing a search programming aid (by indicating a very large range of

connections) more thorough than any existing

thesaurus. (2) The terms are the product of in- tensive analysis, they exist in a form sufficiently

elementary to allow a wide range of post-coordination ... (3) Its notation is often hierarchical

and is readily usable as a code (for punched-cards,

say) expressing hierarchical relations ... (4) The

production of full, detailed schedules, continually

315 Mills, 1964 [388], p. 54. 76

updated, and perhaps in a number of different

languages, is susceptible to mechanization. . . ." 316 Among the advantages of use of the UDC cited

by Mills are that it has the widespread acceptance

of more than 5,000 organizations, that it can be

applied both to books and to materials other than

books, and that it has a highly organized machinery for revision, maintenance, and development,

with extensions and corrections issued at regular

6-month intervals and cumulated every 3 years.317 On the other hand: "The physical difficulties of

altering documents and indexes is a serious problem . . . and a major problem in maintaining

UDC is that of keeping a balance between conser- vation in the retention of existing locations

(favored by older users with substantial files already established) and the pressure of new members for relatively radical changes. There is a formal 'ten-year-rule' whereby a number which is cancelled is not used with a different meaning

until 10 years have elapsed. _ Some users regard

this as unnecessarily restrictive and it is sometimes ignored in private files." 318 Tackling some of the common misconceptions

about a scheme such as the UDC, Mills first points

out that it need not be lacking in specificity of

subject content indication down to the 'microthought' level as required. ". . . A single UDC

number may represent several different terms; e.g., 543.361.3 is equivalent to using the following

terms : Chemistry, Chemical Analysis, Analytical,

Water, Salt Content, Halides, Fluorides." 319 Secondly, the UDC type of system need not be

limited to use of the classified structure alone but

is effectively supplemented by an alphabetized

("A/Z") index to the classification schedules.

Such an index performs several major functions:

"It is a key to the location of classes, providing a

lead-in from the terms of the natural language to the highly artificial notational language. ... It remedies to a significant degree the great drawback . . . [of a classified index] the scattering of

what are 'distributed relatives' .... All the different classes under which the subject is scattered are automatically assembled together as qualifiers

of the common factor. . . . The ambiguities of

language and common usage will always be a central problem in information retrieval; a classifi- cation like UDC remedies them partly by referring

things to systematic contexts. If the reader asks

for 'Rockets' but really means 'Missiles' he will soon find this out when he finds the context is one

of engines only and not vehicles, and the A/Z index

often provides this sort of 'classification' by its qualifying: terms." 320 Examples of adverse reactions to the UDC to be

found in the literature typically include the complaint that the UDC is not continuously revised,

that although "many committees and single con310 Ibid, p. 14.

317 Mills, 1964 [388], p. 11, 14.

318 Ibid, p. 68.

319 Ibid, p. 85.

320 Mills. 1964 [388], p. 25-26, 105.
tributors are trying to keep the UDC up-to-date

. . . tens of thousands of UDC users either do not

know of these changes and innovations or do

not care to insert them into the tables and to

classify accordingly j . . ." 321 Wellisch proposes

that the user of the UDC subscribe only to those

parts of the tables that he needs and that there

be an adequate index.

Vickery, in an article on the UDC and technical

information indexing (1961 [469]), makes such

suggestions as having schedules for new subjects

such as plasma physics and solid state physics, re- consideration of notation in order to achieve

shorter class numbers, and reorganization of the

physics and physical chemistry sections. Vickery

considers "that UDC notation is not useful for

mechanized search systems, although the schedules

themselves provide a valuable source of terms and

hierarchies for such systems." 322 In contrast to Vickery's opinion with respect to search systems, the situation with respect to an- nouncement bulletins and index preparation is one

indicating the feasibility of mechanization. Mills

reports consideration by the U.S. National Committee for the F.I.D. of machine production of

UDC schedules in different languages and, further,

that "recently a few examples of UDC indexes on tape have been reported, although these are primarily for the production by computer printout

of book-form indexes for scanning in the normal

way." 323 The Meteorological and Geoastrophysical Titles,

second experimental issue, is an example in being.

Rigby, in the introduction to this issue, reports on the success of experiments to mechanize the

UDC, undertaken under a grant from the National

Science Foundation. Some pertinent comments

are "Owing to the varying length of the decimal

groups, and to a number of special features such

as brackets, colons, diagonal lines, etc., many documentalists have concluded that the UDC was

not 'machineable' and that it should even be dis- carded as an internationally recommended system

for classification. Our experiments during the

past year to use this system for arrangement and

cross-indexing of titles, have, as can be seen from

this issue, led to just the opposite conclusion,

namely that the system is ideal for systematic in- dexing in almost any field of knowledge requiring

fairly simple machines, and that with more so- phisticated machines such as the IBM 1401 or 704

used in the KWlC Indexes, or their equivalents

of other makes, a superb job of organizing material

of any complexity at any 'depth' could be

achieved with a little experimenting." 324 It has been further reported that these experiments have "demonstrated that the UDC scheme

is suitable for treatment with tabulators or elec- tric computers, and that in spite of some small

821 Wellisch, 1960 [6391/, p. 145.

322 Vickery, 1961 T616], p. 136.

823 Mills, 1964 [388], p. 43.

324 American Meteorological Society, 1962 [20], p. 1.

difficulties the advantages, and possibilities for

enhancement, of the use of UDC are greater than

had been expected." 325

3.7.3. Interchange of Indexing Languages

Five studies have reviewed the possibility of

the interchange of indexing terminology. The

first one, the Datatrol study of Hammond and

Rosenberg in 1962, considers the questions of possible convertibility between the vocabularies of

several agencies ( [236] ) of the U.S. Government.

A related report of Datatrol, by Jaster, appeared

in February 1963 ( [296] ) . The third study, that

of Painter in 1963 ([445]), is concerned with the

duplication and consistency of subject indexing

involved in report handling at the Office of Technical Services. A fourth study of a large-scale

transformation of one of the basic documents mentioned in the other studies, although not about in- terchange as such, is the work of the Information

and Documentation Center of EURATOM, Brussels, Belgium. This study is described in the re- port by Rolling, A Keyword List for Machine

Documentation in the Nuclear Field (1962 [491]).

The fifth report is Datarol's Technical Report IR10 of December 1963 ([155]) on the question of

common vocabulary approaches for government

scientific and technical information services. In the second half of 1961, the Ad Hoc Inter- agency Study Group on Language Compatibility

in Mechanized Storage and Retrieval Systems was

first organized in Washington. The formation of

this group was an indication of Government rec- ognition for need of greater cooperation and compatibility to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort. Although there was no attempt at first to

define "compatibility" accurately, it was suggested

that a precedent had already been set by the Group

for the Standardization of Information Services.

Gray had pointed out that the earlier Group had

found enough common subject headings "so that

the subject heading problem will not prevent the

interfiling of cards from the various agencies and

the termination of duplicate processing." 326 and

Taube had the opinion that "some progress has

been made towards the development of a single

standard list although it must be reemphasized that

the final achievement of a single list remains a

future contingency." 327 What is now desired is a degree of compatibility

permitting the interchange of items for bibliographic control contained on such recording media

as magnetic tapes, not only within such an organization as NASA (having research establishments in various parts of the country) but also

among NASA and like members of the government "reporting community" (AEC, DDC, and

the Clearinghouse of Federal Scientific and Tech325 As reported in Scientific Information Notes 5, (AugustSeptember 1963), p. 9.

328 Gray, 1951 [221], p. 8-9. Taube. 1952 [560], p. 23.

77
nical Information) and with the National Library

of Medicine and the National Agricultural Library. Hammond suggested in August 1962 that

"a hypothesis has been advanced that convertiUlity is a more attainable objective, particularly

in view of the assistance now available from modern computers." 327 In September 1962 Hammond was differentiating between compatibility and convertibility, not- ing that the latter is "the ability to go from one

indexing vocabulary to another, defining the path

in such a way that any incompatibility is circumvented. For example, in that the ASTIA descriptors and AEC subject headings cannot be interfiled with a resulting one-to-one match, and in

that a composite of the two vocabularies would be

excessive for either agency, the two vocabularies

would be called 'incompatible.' Since, however,

equivalents—that is terms that one or the other

would use as substitutes for the others—can be

determined, the vocabularies are 'convertible.'

328 Painter's study distinguishes between convertibility and compatibility as follows : "Convertibility means the ability to take separate operations,

or, in this case, information, draw parallels or

equivalencies, and then through some type of

manipulation be able to extract similar information from all units; convertibility implies similar

intellectual expression. Compatibility, on the

other hand, means that while the separate units are completely dissimilar as far as both system

and intellectual expression are concerned, the out- put of the system can be used by another system

and the information supplied can be retrieved.

There does not have to be equivalency at all. Compatibility is usually applied to systems and

programs or physical objects, while _ convertibility applies to terminology, information or in- tellectual expression." 329 Can the compatibility of indexing terminologies

be achieved by having them convertible? The

seeds to a first approximation for resolving the

problems of interchange of such terminologies

among the scientific agencies of the U.S. Government might be found in the answer to this question.

In the Datatrol studies, the essential task was

to take each of the 7,145 descriptors in the 1960

first edition of the Thesaurus of ASTIA descriptors and find its identical, synonymous, or use- fully equivalent counterpart in the third (January 1960) edition of Subject Headings Used by the

USAEC Technical Information Service. _ The object was to develop if possible a table of indexing

equivalents, which would be unidirectional in that

it shows AEC equivalents for ASTIA's vocabulary, but not vice versa. Datarol "decided to approach the task in ASTIA's Group and Field en- vironment. While one-for-one comparison _ in

straight alphabetic order would reveal identical

327 Hammond and Rosenborg, 1962 [236], p. 1.

3=3 Hammond, 1962 [235J, p. 224.

329 Painter, 1963 [445]., p. 99.

terms, it would be inefficient, more difficult, and

less meaningful for finding other relationships." 330 The 292 descriptor groups of ASTIA's first Thesaurus had been compartmentalized in order

to gain coherency within relatively small groupings of descriptors. The 292 groups were then further placed into 19 fields. The 7,145 descriptors are subsumed under the 292 groups, and the latter are subsumed under 19 broad fields. Datatrol took

each one of the 13,385 subject headings of the

AEC and subsumed it under (assigned it to) one

of the ASTIA groups, a not inconsiderable task. "Each ASTIA Descriptor was analyzed individually in its Group and Field environment and in context with related AEC terminology. Eight

separate degrees of convertibility were established

so that the ASTIA terms could be categorized as

to their degree of convertibility for closer study.

A numeric code was assigned to each category." 331 These eight degrees of convertibility between

descriptor and subject heading were as follows:

(1) identical terminology in spelling and context; (2) synonymous but not identical terminology; (3) standardized AEC subheading 332 is identical to, or synonymous with, the descriptor;

(4) a subject heading in combination with a subheading is synonymous with or generic to a descriptor ; with the dropping of the subheading the

relationship would be represented by No. 6; (5)

two or more subject headings are required for

equivalent indexing terminology; (6) a subject

heading of a broader generic level subsumes the

descriptor; (7) the descriptor of a broader generic

level subsumes the related AEC terminology; and

(8) no equivalent AEC terminology could be identified at any useful generic level. So far, then,

Datatrol placed the subject headings of the AEC

into the descriptor groups of ASTIA, associated

specific subject headings with specific descriptors,

determined that there were eight categories of

convertibility, and indicated the particular cate- gory for each descriptor and the pertinent subject

headings allied therewith.

The bulk of the Datatrol report consists of its table of indexing equivalents thus developed. In

this fist, each descriptor from the 1960 ASTIA

Thesaurus is arranged by ASTIA field and within

each field by group : to each descriptor there are added (1) the AEC equivalent term or terms (if

any), (2) the category of equivalence as determined by Datatrol, (3) the ASTIA frequency of use (so far as Datatrol could determine it), and

aTM Hammond and Rosenborg, 1962 [236], p. 3.

331 Ibid, p. 4.

332 The AEC subheading, standardized in January 1960 but no

longer used as such, creates a problem in determining a final table of indexing equivalents. The current (1963) practice of AEC is to replace such terms by modifiers or key sentences under

the entry for the main subject heading in the Nuclear Science Abstracts (N8A). The corresponding ASTIA terms are used

analogously, namely "as modifiers through the technique of co- ordination, but they would not be used as main entry points in ASTIA's cumulative indexes. The terms in this category are represented by analysis, design, effectiveness, measurement,

theory, and tests; the total number represents 2.0 percent of the ASTIA vocabulary, having been used almost 100,000 times

in the 8 years of ASTlA documentation." (Hammond and Rosenborg, 1962 [236], p. 7).

78
(4) the code number assigned by ASTIA to that

particular descriptor.

For 38.1 percent of the ASTIA descriptors, the

closest equivalent was an AEC subject heading of

broader generic level; for 7.4 percent of the descriptors, the ASTIA terminology was of broader

generic level than its closest AEC equivalent. The

usage of ASTIA terms in both these groups for

eight years of documentation represented only 29.7

percent of ASTIA's total usage of all terms. Synonymous terminology with AEC subject headings was found in 4.2 percent of the ASTIA as- signment to its collection for the eight year period.

For 10.9 percent of the ASTIA descriptors there was no AEC equivalent, this percentage repre- senting only 6.1 percent of ASTIA's eight-year

assignments. Datatrol's explanation for this last phenomenon is that in most instances "AEC did

not have a requirement for the ASTIA indexing

terminology simply because it did not have documentation of the same nature to index." 333 Painter reports that 85 percent of the AEC

terms studied by Datatrol fell into three ASTIA

fields, those for chemistry, materials-metals, and

physics-mathematics, and that in these same three

fields only 31 percent of the ASTIA descriptors

appeared. Painter makes a distinction as to what

may be inferred from the Datatrol study and the

duplicate indexing analyses of her study on OTS : the Datatrol study "was done on a theoretical

basis in the sense that it employs the total number

of descriptors in the Thesaurus and the total number of subject headings in the AEC list. . . . The

Datatrol report attempts to show what is possible ; the duplicate indexing analyses check what actually occurs in practice." 334 Datatrol insists that although its study should

be considered experimental only, the "results indi- cate that patterns of conversion exist such that

the ultimate goal of a Dictionary of indexing

equivalents can be attained." 335 Further, the

levels of convertibility are generally in the cate- gories of identity, synonymity, and generics.

"Difficulties in the two latter areas exist, but are not insurmountable. The assigning, for example,

of a higher generic term as a useful equivalent

tends to be subject to nonrigorous criteria. Knowledge of the system users' requirements,

however, can provide fairly realistic solutions.

Other criteria can be devised as well." 336 Hammond speaking in September 1962 ( [235] )

cited a specific instance of possible convertibility

where there could be the substitution of an "equivalent"—an instance which may be regarded as unfortunate in the light of subsequent events. Descriptor group 98 on Food, of the first edition of

the ASTIA Thesaurus, had a descriptor preservation (which was unquestionably placed there be- cause the thinking in ASTIA was that most of such

333 Hammond and Rosenborg, 1962 [236];, p. 7.

334 Painter, 1963 [445], p. 67 and 94.

335 Hammond and Rosenborg, 1962 [236], Abstract.

338 Ibid, p. 19.

reports in its collection had been on preservation

of food) for which there was no equivalent AEC

subject heading. Therefore, Datatrol determined

to make the subject heading Food equivalent to ASTIA's descriptor Preservation (indicating, by

the way, that this is a term of higher generic

level). "In AEC's five-year cumulative index to NSA we were able to see that, in fact, AEC had

placed documents on food preservation under the

subject heading Food." 337 The dangers inherent in such subsumption of one entity under another are illustrated by the lo- cation of Preservation in the 1962 ASTIA Thesaurus. In the revision, descriptor group 64, Food,

contains only "things" (actual physical entities),

for example, foods or collection of foods, as in

dehydrated foods and military rations, while

Preservation is placed with descriptor group 169 on Abstract Concepts. The entry for Preservation in the revised Thesaurus itself has the term

placed in descriptor group 179 on Industrial and

Laboratory Processes (in which group, incidentally, it is not found) and the term is defined with

a scope note as "Prevention of deterioration of

stored commodities, structural members, materials, etc." The descriptor Preservation has an

"also see" in the thesaurus to Storage, which descriptor is placed in descriptor group 38 for Containers and Packaging, this descriptor being the

only one in group 38 that is not a "thing."

Hammond also describes (1962 [235]) two

studies which he contends support the earlier

Datatrol study : convertibility of most frequently

used AEC terms, and comparative analysis of the

AEC and ASTIA indexing of a common body

of reports. The first of these supporting studies

had been reported in the first Datatrol study. It indicated that "the 905 most frequently used AEC

headings (used at least once a month), while rep- resenting only 7 percent of the total AEC five- year vocabulary, accounted for some 80 percent

of AEC term assignments. Over half of these

headings were identical or directly convertible,

and the others easily convertible to ASTIA descriptors. These figures clearly show that, to give a true picture, any measures of convertibility of

terms must take into account their frequency of

use, since each assignment represents an event having convertibility potential." 338 In the second supplementary Datatrol study, Jaster compared the AEC and ASTIA indexing

of 277 reports cataloged by both agencies. The

sample was selected from the AD reports listed in

the Semiannual Report Number Index to NSA

for the period January-June 1961. To index these

277 reports ASTIA used 2,571 descriptors and

AEC 840 subject headings, about half of the latter figure being identical, or practically so, with the

ASTIA assignments. In 59 of the documents,

representing 21 percent of the sample, all AEC

337 Hammond, 1962 [235], p. 224. ^ Hammond, 1962 [235], p. 226.

79
terms were matched by ASTIA terms. Hammond

concludes ". . . it was apparent that conversion

of the ASTIA descriptors by means of the table

of indexing equivalents would, in fact, substantially have generated the terms AEC used." 339 The Datatrol report by Jaster (1963 [296])

describes a tool devised for compiling a dictionary

showing multilateral equivalence among the in- dexing terms of the AEC, DDC, and NASA. In

the preparation of the "subsumption" scheme, the

field and group structure of the ASTIA 1960

Thesaurus was modified by three techniques: deletion, addition, and distribution of terms. There

resulted 20 fields instead of the 19 of the ASTIA

Thesaurus. One variance in procedure adopted

in the modification of the ASTIA/DDC scheme was provision for assigning indexing terms to any

number of indexing groups whereas in the preparation of the first ASTIA Thesaurus each descrip- tor was assigned to only one descriptor group.

In the preparation of this subsumption scheme

consideration was given to the use of broad cate- gories, possibly to be attained by (1) merging the

fields of ASTIA/DDC, the categories of the

NASA Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports, and the categories of the AEC Nuclear

Science Abstracts or (2) extrapolation from other

schemes for categorization or classification such

as the AEC evaluation lists, ASTIA Distribution

Guide, or NASA distribution categories.

Datatrol continued this line of attack in its December 1963 report on common vocabulary approaches for government scientific and technical

information services. This study was given impetus by the interest of the Committee on Scientific Information of the Federal Council for

Science and Technology, and its object was "to develop and document guidelines and criteria to be used in reaching a decision on a single Government-wide approach to an information re- trieval vocabulary." 340 Datatrol was assisted in

its inquiry by an Interagency Task Group on Vocabulary Study, formed to act as expert consultants to COSI, particularly in matters regarding

common vocabulary. The members of the Task

Group, with a representative of the National

Science Foundation as Chairman, included representatives from the AEC, DDC, NASA, National

Agricultural Library, National Bureau of Standards, National Library of Medicine, and OTS.

At the invitation of the Chairman of the Operating Committee of COSI, members of the Science

Information Exchange participated in the study,

and members of the COSI Operating Committee

and other responsible and knowledgeable individuals were consulted. The three specific requirements of the study were (1) to identify the

alternative courses of action available for government-wide adoption respecting common vocabulary approaches for information storage, search,

339 Hammond, 1962 [235], p. 227.

340 Datatrol Corp., 1963 [155], Foreword.

and retrieval; (2) to evaluate each course regarding its economic impact on each agency within the i COSI Operating Committee; and (3) to report on i evaluations and on the guidelines and criteria useful for reaching a decision on a single, governmentwide approach to a vocabulary.

The following five approaches to the alternative I courses of action of the first requirements were

given consideration: (1) single thesaurus: preparation of one vocabulary reference for indexing j all government scientific and technical documents

(2) single subject heading list: preparation of one j list of subject headings for indexing all govern- j ment scientific and technical reports; (3) cor- \ related thesauri: preparation of a thesaurus by

each agency for its use and preparation of a ma- ! chine-independent computer program for correlating all government thesauri; (4) combined the- saurus and subject heading list: preparation of a | thesaurus or list of subject headings by each | agency "according to its option (status quo)," i.e., 1 its current method of conducting its documentaj tion, especially its current tackling of vocabulary, ; plus preparation of one or more machine-inde- i pendent programs for locating all words used by ;j government agencies to describe identical objects jji and concepts; and (5) common subsumption H scheme: "preparation of a single list of broad j generic subject categories that will subsume the |i composite subject content of government research jj reports. Such a scheme to be used by each agency 6 to categorize reports independently of the index- ( ing vocabulary. Preparation of a computerized

f application for correlation of indexing data among

the agencies." 341 Datatrol elected to evaluate these five approaches on the basis of effectiveness and cost of indexing j for announcement and retrieval of the government

scientific and technical information systems. Regarding the indexing of the reports for purposes of

their announcement, Datatrol concluded that the

indexing by either AEC, NASA, or DDC did not

satisfy the requirements of each other. Regarding the indexing of the reports for purposes of

their retrieval, Datatrol saw "no evidence that,

j under the current modus operandi, a single the-

| saurus, subject heading list, or correlated thesauri i| would offer any significant advantage over the j> status quo for searching multiple collections.

Superimposing a common subsumption scheme j

. . . appears to offer the most promising approach

under either a computer-correlated approach or

[j for mutual organization of indexing data of sev- eral agencies." 342 Furthermore, adoption of the common subsumption scheme by all operating agencies was

regarded as possibly providing the points of departure for computer generation of indexing

equivalents for searching different systems. Datatrol defines its common subsumption scheme as "a

341 Datatrol Corp., 1963 [155], p. 8.

342 Ibid, p. 72.

80
tool of convenience for grouping and displaying

associated terms of a given indexing vocabulary

to serve as an authority for indexing, storing, and

retrieving reports or data from a given information system. The associations may be vocabulary

oriented and/or agency program oriented . . . i.e., based on subject category, scientific discipline,

project or other special interest, or a combination

of any of these associations." 343 Datatrol thus regards the statistical association

of indexing terms as the most promising approach for correlating the indexing data of the

different operating agencies for retrieval.344 The

multidimensional correlations of statistical asso- ciation techniques include the term profile or statistically associated terms from the indexing data

of a given system and the identification of equivalent search terminology employing association

profiles of terms used by different systems to index

reports of related subject categories.345 The study by Painter, submitted as a doctoral

thesis to the Graduate School of Rutgers, The

State University of New Jersey, was conducted

as part of a cooperative Office of Technical Services-National Bureau of Standards project examining the feasibility of automation of information

handling operations in OTS. The three primary

objects of the Painter study were to determine

(1) the types, amount and frequency of duplication among reports submitted to OTS from other

government agencies; (2) the amount and fre- quency, as well as the significance, of duplicate

indexing efforts by the contributing agencies ; and

(3) the consistency of subject indexing within

major agencies contributing to OTS (DDC,

AEC, and NASA) and also at the National Agricultural Library, which does not contribute to OTS.

Painter summarized her findings regarding

duplication of reports sent to OTS as follows:

"Duplication, examined by the regular search

procedure in practice at OTS, was found to occur

at three levels: one necessitated almost complete

processing before search, one required only partial

analysis, and one needed only one search item for

identification. The duplication rate occurred at a maximum of 50 percent with the second and third

of these levels. Most of the duplication was identified through the report or series number or the

AD number. It was concluded, therefore, that

machine search [for duplicates] was feasible at the simplest level of processing (report number

or series number). This would put preparation

time at a minimum and eliminate the duplicated

materials." 345a Painter also undertook a determination of the

"equivalency of terms and their possible convertibility as revealed in an analysis of the indexing

of a report or reports by two or more agencies."

543 Datatrol Corp., 1963 [155], p. 53.

344 Ibid, p. 71.

345 Ibid. p. 98-99.

us* Painter, 1963 [445], p. vii-viii.

She took as basic the Datatrol study on the convertibility between the ASTIA descriptor and the

AEC subject heading, and she made a comparison

with the results obtained by Jaster of Datatrol,

reported above. Painter examined 200 items

which had been indexed by both ASTIA and AEC

in order to learn what equivalency of assignment

had been made by the respective agencies. She

found that of the 2,217 ASTIA descriptors and

640 AEC subject headings there was a total of

426 terms that were either equivalent, word-byword, or synonymous. "Thus the percentage of

equivalency within the ASTDA descriptors was 20

percent as opposed to 67 percent Avithin the AEC

subject headings. On the basis of the total number of terms assigned (2,857), the degree of similarity in indexing between the two systems would

be 30 percent." 346 This last figure was obtained

as a ratio of the sum of the ASTIA equivalent

terms plus the AEC equivalent terms to the sum

of all ASTIA terms plus all AEC terms.

Painter's summation of the two Datatrol studies

and her own related one is that : "Taken as a

whole, the three studies seem to point out a degree

of convertibility between ASTIA and AEC. A

large percent of the AEC documents could be re- trieved by converting to ASTIA descriptors, at

least in the three fields where comparison is most

valid. A third of this is exact equivalency, or synonymity; a majority of the comparisons of

terms are complicated by generic (term in one scheme subsumes two or more of another) rela- tionships, but according to the basic Datatrol

report this need not be a serious block to retrievability. Only 10 percent possibly would not be

retrieved." 347 Painter suggests, however, that more evidence is needed that satisfactory retrieval

results from the use of a term of higher generality.

A comparison and analysis was also made for

triplicate indexing between ASTIA, AEC, and

NASA for a small sample of 16 items. To these

16 items, ASTIA had assigned 219 terms, NASA

74, and AEC 32. In these assignments there were

25 equivalents appearing among all three, making

12 percent equivalency with the terms from

ASTIA, 64 percent from NASA, and 78 percent

with those from AEC.

Painter made two comparisons between assignments by ASTIA and NASA for 90 NASA documents indexed by ASTIA between April and July

1962. There were 306 ASTIA descriptors and 87

NASA Uniterms (subject headings and subheadings broken "into single units usually consisting

of one word which can be coordinated either manually or by machine in a variety of different

combinations . . .").348 Of the terms assigned, 52 were equivalent within each system, giving equivalencies of 17 and 60 percent respectively for the

ASTIA and NASA terms.

343 Ibid, p. 76.

347 Painter, 1963 [445], p. 79.

348 Ibid., p. 74.

81
The ASTIA rate of equivalency ranged from

11 to 19 percent when compared with AEC headings in the duplication check by Painter and the

supplementary Datatrol study of Jaster, but in

the basic Datatrol study the ASTIA rate jumped

to 28 percent when the entire list of ASTIA descriptors was used, including obsolete terminology.

The AEC rate of equivalency, however, ranged

from 34 to 72 percent as compared with the 15 per- cent indicated by the basic Datatrol study, which

"is figured on a theoretical basis of the total term

list only part of which is in current use." 348a Painter's conclusions are that although the

figures are too sparse for firm convictions, (1) most

of the systems can be converted into the ASTIA

descriptor structure but not into any of the others

(2) since equivalency of indexing terms between

ASTIA and AEC was not more than 28 percent

of the larger system (ASTIA) but was as high as 72 percent of the smaller (AEC) , the smaller could

be adapted to the larger but not vice versa; and

(3) "with only 60 to 70 percent consistency of

indexing within each system and equivalency

of only 30 percent within the broadest system, a

table of equivalents is at present of little value

in either a manual or a machine system." 349 She

contends that in order to apply a table of equivalents, both a high degree of indexer consistency

and a high degree of equivalency of terms used

are essential. The Information and Documentation Center

(CID) of EURATOM, an international organization located in Brussels, Belgium, has published

its work of transforming the Subject Headings of

the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (TID-50001,

third edition) into a thesaurus of key words. The

thesaurus is used for the storage and retrieval of

information regarding physics, reactor technology,

protection from radiation, application of isotopes,

materials, electronics, radiochemistry, and radiobiology. CID reduced the 1960 AEC subject

heading list of 12,809 terms to about 4,500 key

words, "known also as descriptors, selectors or

subject headings . . . ." 350 This reduction was

accomplished in large part because of the methods

used in the AEC list for indicating alloys and

phase studies of mixtures and also because only

7,208 terms were used in the 1960 cumulative index

for Nuclear Science Abstracts.

CID split up the 4,500 key words into about 50

groups, according to subject field, in order to

collect the synonyms and the generic and subordinate terms and examine their contents comparatively. Graphic displays were made for the groups

of key words which permitted grouping terms of

like association together. "The related terms were

linked by lines or arrows, and this provided an

impressive and lucid representation of the 'see34811 Painter, 1963 [445], p. 82.

3,9 Ibid, p. ix. 3M Rolling, 1962 [491], p. 2

also references' included in the American subject

headings list." 351 Eventually the organic com- pounds (1,854 key words) and isotopes (1,386 i key words) were excluded from the list, leaving

a residue of only 1,127 key words.

Reference has been made to the desire of the

Committee on Scientific Information for an overall index to the report literature of the agencies

of the U.S. Government. Science, Government

and Information, the January 1963 report of the ; President's Science Advisory Committee (the

Weinberg report) , finds with respect to a system

for handling scientific or technical information

in a network of separate subsystems, that "rapid

and efficient switching between the different ele- ments of the system is essential," 352 that the first among the means for rapid switching is compatibility and that, at least so far as title formats and j key words are concerned, to be compatible means j

! to be "easily intertranslated." 353 The National Library of Medicine is an ex- I ample of a governmental agency planning for both j centralization and decentralization. The NLM \ hopes that its MEDLARS medical bibliographic : system will meet a rise expected in demands for

service, especially demand-search requests. The ; Library sees two ways to meet the increased load

First, "increase the capacity of MEDLARS to process the requests, coupled with an increase in \ communication lines, and possibly coupled with !| remote input/output facilities located at centers of large demand. Second, decentralize the serv- icing of requests by using remotely located search [ facilities: the acquisition, indexing, conversion,

and storage for retrieval would be done at NLM

while magnetic tapes comprising the files would

be reproduced by the Library and distributed to remotely located search centers." 354 There is no

mention here of centralization of NLM's information with that of any other governmental agency.

Rothgeb (1963 [496]) reports that the Scientific

and Technical Information Facility operated by

Documentation, Inc., for NASA, "is designed to maintain a centralized processing system for max- imum decentralized use." Rothgeb claims that the

centralized processing (1) enables NASA field centers to contribute documents to the system for

ready availability to other users of the system, (2)

provides the field centers with their own search

tapes, and (3) permits searching capabilities

which cover information from journals before they

are printed and before the search tapes reach the \ field centers' search system. There is no mention

of centralization of NASA's information with

that of any other governmental agency.

A report to the National Science Foundation

by Arthur D. Little, Inc., on centralization and

documentation recommends that before elaborate

351 Rolling, 1962 [491], p. 3.

352 President's Science Advisory Committee, 1963 [464], p. 4.

353 Ibid, p. 36.

354 National Library of Medicine, 1963, [412], p. 61-62.

82
.{ word thesauri are developed for existing partially

centralized information retrieval systems, there

ij should be more investigation of the statistical tech-

„ niques for generating thesaurus lists automatically

and for automating functions performed by hu6 man intermediaries.355 Existing large-scale co- ordinate retrieval systems are regarded as scaleds up and computerized versions of punched card

I searching systems based on index term matching;

9 their overall performance in terms of precision

e and recall measures appears low and inadequate

j to provide a thorough searching facility.356 The

j Arthur D. Little report was made at the behest

j of the Foundation for the Panel on Science Infor-

, mation of the President's Science Advisory Comt mittee, as reported by Weinberg.357 We should note here that Warheit in his review

\ of the Arthur D. Little study (1962 [629]) bes lieves that "the essential conclusion that a large

general collection cannot be searched with any

. real precision or completeness just doesn't stand

] up. It can be shown theoretically, it is said, that

[ the models developed (in the study) show the

, inability of making a precise and complete bib-

| liographic search in a file of over 100,000 items,

j Yet librarians almost every day make effective

, searches in much larger files."

, There appear to be logical questions, too, as to

, the ability to handle all scientific disciplines in

! the same way. For example, the Summary of

, Discussion on Area 7 at the 1958 International

Conference on Scientific Information reported by

Clapp and Rogers (1959 [121]) reemphasizes the

points made by Boutry of the Abstracting Board

[ of the International Council of Scientific Unions

[ theorizing that the many problems in the docu-

( mentation of the biological disciplines may be ac-

, counted for by their magnitude, amounting to

. about 50 percent of all abstracted literature, by

contrast with one fifth to one sixth for physics,

; and less than one third for chemistry. This is

i cited in connection with the thought of merging

i the vocabularies for the physical and life sciences.

Hyslop contends, on the other hand, that there

i are similarities in the system of the American SoI ciety for Metals at Western Reserve University,

designed for computer processing and a centralized information service, and the system of the

i AIChE, designed primarily for manual or simple

i card files and for use by individuals, but adapted

for machine use as well. She believes that "the

i similarities between the two systems lie in philoso-

' phy or methodology used to analyze the informai tion contained in the original document—whether

this analysis is done manually or by machine.

Both systems utilize three devices for subject

analysis. In the ASM-WRU system these three

i devices are designed as 'code dictionary,' 'role

355 A. D. Little, 1963 [ 344], p. 4. 3M Ibid, p. 2.

357 Weinberg, 1962 [636], p. 4.

indicators,' and 'punctuation.' In the AIChE

system the corresponding terms are 'thesaurus,'

'role indicators,' and 'links.' " 358 Brenner and his associates of the American Petroleum Institute report that the centralized in- formation retrieval system for the petroleum

industry makes use of a thesaurus, its Subject

Authority List, which is "similar to those of

the AIChE, EJC, and DDC." Further, "no

other one vocabulary contains all the technical

terms used in the publications covered by API

Abstracts." 359 Several representatives of the Federal Government have proposed a centralized system of code

cataloging for machine retrieval. Langenbeck of

the Naval Ordnance Laboratory suggests that "a

DOD-wide standard code and dictionary can be

realized by comparing individual library codes

of activities using machine retrieval and arriving

at a compromise. A very carefully drawn standard and a control system will be necessary for

periodic revisions of the standard code and dictionary." He proposes also for "each activity to do the descriptive cataloging, subject cataloging,

and machine coding for all reports it creates and

distributes. This information is to be incorporated as an integral part of the report on a specific page reserved for library use." 360 Hooker hopes that experimentation on the bibliographic control of scientific literature "will lead

to some standardized or centralized systems which

will put all this information on magnetic tape and

that we, the users, can buy the tapes and each do

his own retrieving. . . . the logical solution seems to me to be preparation of the product centrally with the reference use or retrieval of the

information locally." 361 Three other citations, already made, may be re- ferred to again regarding difficulty in centralizing

indexing vocabularies. Ball (1947 [44]) favors a system for classification, such as that of the

Patent Office, integrated with the UDC and he

would have a corps of specialists supervising this

system continually. Pings (1960 [458]), on the

other hand, would have nothing to do with at- temps at a universal classification, contending

that there will never be agreement upon a universal classification unless there is agreement in dealing satisfactorily with limitations of scientific inquiry. The UDC, too, has had its detractors

such as Wellisch (1960 [634]) who finds that

many users of the UDC do not know of the

changes made in the classification and do not have

interest to abide by changes made by the many

committees and contributors. Such varying opinions certainly have bearing on the success of at- tempts to interchange or centralize indexing

vocabularies.

^Hyslop, 1963 [278J, p. 293. ^'Brenner, et al.. 1963 [78], p. 290-291.

360 Langenbeck, 1962 [328], p. 13, 17.

3«i Hooker, 1962 [271], p. 17.

S3
3.8. Storage, Search, and Selective

Dissemination

The scope of this report includes storage in some aspects—standardization of formats, compatibility and convertibility between forms of

storage media, maintenance of cooperative deposits, and search, in the sense of what is obtained

as product of a search. The need for considerations of convertibility or compatibility is especially pressing for mechanized information sys- tems. Conventional manual systems require consideration of cooperative and coordinated action

but in the realm of analysis, identification, and

systematization of indexing processes, as we have

already seen. Mechanized systems must also consider coordinated action in the matter of type and

form of storage medium and of search product.

Current operations in this area are not extensive.

Some proposed activities have been formulated,

but we can review the considerations and needs

for cooperative steps along these lines. Hayes points out that not only does the mechanization of information handling processes

require "a detailed specification of every minute

step and operation" but also that the costs of

mechanization are great enough so that the procedures which must be specified in detail must also

be highly efficient." 361a This means, among other

things, that the inefficiencies of reediting, retransscription, reformatting, and the like should be

avoided when materials processed in one organization are also to be processed by another.

Wherever cooperation, exchange, and interchange

are involved between two or more organizations,

at least one of which uses a machine system, effec- tive cooperation will thus require the development

of appropriate measures of compatibility, as well

as the making available of minutely detailed

specifications. If, for example, either DDC or the

Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information wishes to make copies of magnetic tape files or of paper tapes used to print

announcement bulletins available to other organizations, the copies cannot be used elsewhere unless they are accompanied by specifications in such

fine detail as whether descriptors in a list of descriptors are separated by two or by three blank

spaces and the different sort-sequences resulting

from interpretation in different machines of the

bit patterns used to encode characters.

We must then consider questions of convertibility from one machine-usable format and/or character set to another, from one machine language

to another, from a single problem-oriented language to more than one machine language or in- terpretative program, and from one notation sys- tem to another. In addition, there must be considered the question of automatic conversion from

one indexing language to another, the question of

automatic conversion from natural language to a

sma Hayes, 1960 [241], p. 6.

documentary language, and the question of auto- matic conversion from natural language to amplified searching languages.

Let us turn our attention to two forms of stor- age which involve cooperative action by information systems and centers. The first form is the

cooperative depository library, wherein participating libraries and centers store their cooperatively

acquired collections, their little-used material, or even items they no longer need but wish to make

available to other organizations. We have already

mentioned depository libraries established and

maintained by a central facility, such as the AEC

network. These also constitute cooperative stor- a£6- Such cooperative storage facilities could alle- viate many of the weeding-out problems by providing temporary disposals subject to recall as needed. "Weeding requires a great deal of staff time in selecting the items to be discarded, changing the catalog records, actually removing the

books from the shelves, deciding how to dispose

of the books, and observing federal regulations on

the disposal of government property." 362 Removing obsolete works from a collection may have

little significance so far as space saving is con- | cerned, but it does expedite research by facilitat- 'h ing access to the more valuable material.

The second form of storage we might consider

is microphotographic storage—microfilm, microfiche, cards and the like. Such media relate mainly

to the improvement of physical accessibility ; in

themselves they do not contribute to the solution

of content accessibility. Microphotographic material can be acquired and stored by an individual

library or cooperatively by several libraries; the

latter possibility is of greater interest to us here. One point to note in regard to cooperative acquij sition of microforms is that microfilms made from

master negatives do not go out of print, and may

therefore be acquired when and if needed. Fussier

emphasizes that "mircofilm can economically be

acquired either as an edition copy or as a single

acquisition to meet an existing need—in contrast

to acquisition in anticipation of a future need. [ The gains in the latter are very great, for it means

that large masses of highly specialized and pej ripheral literature—systematically and cooperatively collected—would be available on a deferred

basis, when needed, at costs less than multiple

acquisition, cataloging, and storage." 363 A cooperative program that combines depository

storage and microforms is that for "auxiliary" or "demand" publication in which documents are deposited in a central repository and from which ; copies can be had on demand. This requires an announcement through published summary or conj densed article of the availability of the deposited

j document. The technique of auxiliary publication

already has been used for distribution of U.S. gov- :

302 Evans;, 1963 [18S], p. 5.

363 Fussier, 1951 [207], p. 82. 84
ernment research reports by OTS and theses by

University Microfilms, Inc., and in the ADI's

"auxiliary publication program", wherein tabular

data and extensive texts not ordinarily published

by scientific journals, but useful for a limited number of specialists in the field, are placed on microfilm. They, along with microfilms of certain rare and out-of-print journals, are transferred to the

LC Photoduplication Service where photocopies

are made available upon request.

University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan,

maintains files of many publications in microfilm

form, and will duplicate its files in either microfilm or hard copy. There are five categories which

reflect the major interests of this organization:

periodicals, newspapers, books, special fields, and

equipment. The periodicals include microfilms of

modern periodicals, English literary periodicals

of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, Russianlanguage periodicals, American periodicals of the

18th and 19th centuries, and Chinese-language

periodicals not previously available in the United

States. Newspapers on microfilm include Irish

newspapers prior to 1750 in Dublin libraries, se- lected English newspapers, modern newspapers

(including the New York Times, Osservatore

Romano, and Commercial and. Financial Chronicle), and Arab newspapers. Books on microfilm

include English books of the 15th, 16th, and 17th

centuries, scarce manuscripts and books on Americana, and out-of-print books including Russian

material.

Among the efforts to control microfilm material

bibliographically have been "the Union List of

Microfilms, published by the Philadelphia Bibliographical Center, the Microfilm Clearing House

maintained at the Library of Congress . . . ." 364 Also, "The Navy Research Section's experience

with the Microcards has been in connection with an experimental program proposed late in 1950 by

the Office of Naval Research . . . distributing ... a particular type of Microcard for the Unclassified and Restricted reports abstracted in

NRS' abstract bulletin—the Technical Information Pilot (TIP). This card consists of a con- ventional Microcard laminated to the back of a standard NRS catalog card." 365 All the problems associated with the use of microforms have not been solved. As Fussier points

out, ". . . In many respects photographic access

is of critical importance in relation to the success of any broad plan for the cooperative acquisition

of original materials . . . [but technical advancements will be required to] increase accessibility by

promoting ease of use, by reducing costs, and by

faster availability." 366 Three government agencies—the AEC, NASA,

and DOD—have recently standardized a microfiche system for reproducing all research and de304 Council on Library Resources, 1958 [140], p. 19.

3C3 Gray, 1952 [223], p. 58.

366 Fussier, 1951 [207], p. 183.

velopment reports from these agencies and their contractors. The microfiche is a negative card

containing document pages in micro form. The

agencies have not only agreed to the outside di- mensions of approximately 4x6 inches, but to other standard dimensions as well—spacing between pages, reduction ratio, and others. These

standards make it possible for documents from the

three agencies to be viewed and reproduced by the same equipment, viewing screens and projection

lenses. Dissemination of reports will be faster

and simpler, and the agencies will be able to cut

costs. The Federal Council for Science and Technology adopted the standard in the Spring of 1963

for government-wide use.

367 There is also the possibility that central Federal support should be

provided for the procurement (or development as necessary) of inexpensive readers capable of handling the new standard microform and their placement in all Federal libraries and in all cooperating public or private libraries. Assuming that storage, subject to selective recall and retrieval, has been effectively achieved,

what is the situation with respect to the compatibility or convertibility of the search product?

The product that is obtained depends largely on

the type of system from which it comes. For ex- ample, some systems store data, technical or administrative in nature, and process this material

to produce factual results in the course of normal

operations or in answer to specific queries. Chemical compounds are tested for biological activity

and the results recorded in a data-storing system;

then studies are made of correlations between

chemical structure and biological effects. The

products of such a system are actual facts and

figures on correlations, structures, and activities. On the other hand, some systems store refer- ences to data, or to the documents containing data,

and produce notations of pertinent references in answer to particular queries. The number of such

systems is large and their operations are highly

diversified with reference to the degree of mechanization employed in their operations. Still other systems store data or references but produce

general search aids as part of an integrated operation. Search aids include indexes, biblographies,

and publication aids providing, for a specific area

of science and technology, a means for individuals

to make particular searches or to maintain cur- rent awareness. Alternatively, the product of an

information system might be a machine-searchable

file, such as the reproduction of decks of punched

cards, with which the individual can set up his

own system for making specific searches.

In all cases, products of information systems,

whatever their form, need to be considered in

terms of their compatibility or convertibility one

to another. The question is whether these prod3G7 "Microfiche Standards Adopted," 1964 [383].

85
ucts can be used by others than those who produced them, and whether they can be exchanged

and incorporated into other files. The question,

in general, has been explored elsewhere in this re- port. Here, we shall mention only those few further illustrations of possibilities of compatibility in the area of the production of selective

bibliographies.

Betty Gray of the Textile Fibers Dept. of E. I. du Pont de Nemours uses 368 the tape typewriter in

the preparation of annotated bibliographies to

reports. A punched paper tape, produced when

reference cards are typed on an automatic typewriter, is used for type-out of a final master copy

of the bibliography. The sections of the punched

tape corresponding to individual references can be

arranged conveniently to satisfy the final arrangement desired, and the searcher is not confined to a predetermined order in making the search. The

use of this system results in a saving of 60 percent over the time required for manual typing of a

bibliographic report.

A further comment may also be of interest : "Not

only is the ability of federal librarians to prepare

useful bibliographies most inadequately utilized,

but those which have been prepared have generally

been issued in quantities too small to reach all who

would benefit from them. A coordinated bibliographic service, established through the cooperative efforts of departmental libraries, would do

much to improve this situation. Such a service

should, of course, complement and assist rather

than duplicate the bibliographic work of nongovernmental bodies so as to promote broad, high quality, national bibliographical coverage." 369 Selective bibliographies are related on the one hand to specialized mailing lists and on the other

to the selective dissemination systems first suggested by the Luhn (1958 [355], i962 [353] ) . An

early Government example of selective mailing

lists was that of "the Solid Propellant Information Agency (SPIA), which was established in

1946 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied

Physics Laboratory ... A unique feature of

SPIA's operation is its Joint Army-Navy-Air

Force Mailing List for the distribution of solid

propellant technical information." 370 Another co- operative defense agency example was the Army—

Navy-Air Force Guided Missile Mailing List

which had "the effect of grouping of individuals

working on similar research and providing them

with information of mutual subject interest." 371 Selective dissemination, or SDI, systems are

tailored instead to individual subject interests,

particularly the research worker's current awareness needs, where he has filed a "profile" of his current subject interests which can be updated by

machine as a result of feedback from him. Incoming items that "match" his stored profile result in

363 Gray, 1961 [220], p. 71.

369 Evans, 1963 [188], p. 30.

3TMHerner and Herner, 1959 [254], p. 190.

3n Heald, 1952 [244], p. 140.

notifications being sent to him of the availability

of these items on a turn-around card so that he

may order any of the items. Kraft, reporting in . 1963 on the then state-of-the-art of SDI systems

j makes the following comments

"Those people who have a current awareness 1^ need should furnish lists of words which charac

'

terize their various interests. These are the same j

'hot-button' words which the reader looks for when , he browses . . . "At the time of this writing, there are in excess , of a dozen SDI systems in the country . . . "Efficient dissemination, when a document first

1

, appears, reduces the retrieval problem later. SDI j is a kind of 'retrieval-in-advance'—a current , awareness program that helps users keep abreast ( of new information ... "An analysis of users' replies indicated that two- - thirds of the notices were 'of interest' and one-

] third of 'no interest.' Considering that a 'typical' , user received an average of five SDI notices per

day, the noise level of 34 percent was tolerable,

since it required less than one minute to read an SDI abstract and punch out the reply card." 372

, At NASA, an SDI system is under development

and experimental trial. "Reports having a probability of specific interest to a particular individual are selected by specially prepared computer

programs. Each man's 'interest profile,' consisting

of subject terms and phrases related to his activities and interests is compared with the subject in- dexes of all reports to be annotated in current is- sues of STAR. When an optimum match between

terms occurs, an abstract of the selected report is mailed directly to the participant, delivery being

made even before the abstracts are available in

STAB." 373

3.9. Standardization

In spite of our earlier statements to the effect! that too little progress has been accomplished and

too little effort is being expended on problems of

cooperation, compatibility, and convertibility, weS

can report considerable efforts toward agreement,

and standardization in progress. Such efforts are being carried forward by or- ganizations primarily devoted to standardization,

by societies devoted to professional activities but

vitally concerned with standards, and by other

groups whose work is affected by and would benefit

from the development of standards. These standards are concerned with hardware, equipment,

physical formats, and the like ; they are also con- cerned with intellectual aspects, languages, codes,

subject contents, and similar points. Many ofj

these have been touched upon in earlier sections of

this report. Here we shall discuss the standards

and standardization efforts in terms of the groups

working on them.

3TM Kraft, 1964 [323]i, p. 143-151.

373 Scientific Information Notes G, 1, 1-2 (1964).

86
3.9.1. Programs of Federal Government Agencies

Activities of the Group for the Standardization

of Information Services were mentioned earlier

in this review : four government agencies ( AEC,

NACA, Central Air Documents Office, and LC

Navy Research Section) came to an agreement

regarding a few of the problems encountered in

their bibliographic services. The problems were

attacked in meetings of working-level individuals

by first setting up standardization goals, the at- tainment of which would permit each agency to use the products of the others. Following dis- cussion, the tentative decisions reached were taken

back to the appropriate authorities in each agency

for approval, which was generally quickly forthcoming. The major items on which agreement was reached included the common format for li- brary cards and the development of a subject

heading list that would be as nearly common to

all agencies as was possible.

In 1956 Connor, of the Technical Library of the

U.S. Naval Air Missile Test Center at Point Mugu,

Calif., in citing the need for standardization in

the documentation of government research reports,

asked specifically for a "statement setting forth

physical and bibliographic requisites in the preparation and publication of reports." 374 This was

to be one of the specifications within a government

contract. The items which Connor wished to see standardized were (1) with reference to physical

format, the size and kind of paper on which the

document is inscribed, and the types of cover and

of binding (e.g., whether stapled or sewed) ; and

(2) with regard to bibliographic data, title pages were to show only company or agency along with

personal authors, dates including inclusive dates

for periodic reports, title, report number, and

address of organization responsible for the report.

The attention of military agencies to standardization and compatibility is demonstrated by the

activities of the DDC which include work on abstract standardization. "A uniform abstract cov- ering all bibliographic elements for technical re- ports is being devised for use by originators and

authors, thus paving the way for automation on common grounds and large savings in time, ex- pense, and repetitive bibliographic efforts." 375 Col. Vann, then director at DDC (ASTIA) , spoke

to this point: "[It is] important ... to start at the point of generation with a format and standards which will speed up the cataloging, indexing,

and retrieval of a document when it reaches the

Documentation Center." 376 Another area of DDC effort is concerned with

interchange of magnetic tapes. The prerequisites

here are an essentially complete automatic data

processing system and uniform processing of in- formation. Exchange of compatible tapes will

then be feasible and permit rapid interchange of

information with minimal duplication of effort.

3 TM Connor, 1956 [134], p. 155.

376 ASTIA statement in NSF-63-5 19*62 [418], p. 66^69.

878 Vann, 1963 [606], p. 221.

Heald emphasizes these points (1963 [175])

when he states that ASTIA has made efforts toward standardization and compatibility in the

revision of its Thesaurus of ASTIA Descriptors

and in the desire for adoption of abstract standardization. He lists the entire bibliographic cita- tion for describing a report as being one of the

elements of a standard abstract, along with the

summary or body of the abstract. This standard

abstract includes title, author, originating agency,

identifying number, and subject indexing, as well

as the summary.

Heald contends that by means of coordination

within the abstract standard there will be attained

(1) compatibility of indexing and abstracting;

(2) computer-to-computer communication through

interchange of magnetic tapes and rapid network

transmission; (3) reduction in the time for processing information, between its origin and its being

made available; and (4) reduction of the cost of

index and abstract processing: ". . . tremendous

gains are possible by building a vocabulary as compatible as possible with other information activities, such as those of NASA, AEC, OTS, and

DOD activities and contractors. The eventual

pay-off here is computer-to-computer interchange

of information and interchange of magnetic

tape." 377 Similar opinion was expressed by Hall, who

said, "Standardization in such matters as report

designation, layout of covers and preliminary

pages, the furnishing of abstracts and catalog

cards within the reports themselves, bibliographic

usage, arrangement of contents and indexing ac- complishes two important and money-saving

ends. It provides for a more rapid and accurate production of the reports themselves . . . and at the other end of the cycle provides for faster and more effective indexing, cataloging, coding." 378 The survey of scientific and technical information retrieval schemes within the Department of

the Army, by Weik and Confer (1962 [633]), has

remarks pertinent to compatibility and standardization. They find that there is very little uniformity or standardization among such schemes,

and that the great tendency to devise codes for

easing the classification, storage, and retrieval

problem is evidence of the great ambiguity in the

English language.

The Institute for Defense Analysis made a digital computer applications study for the Advanced

Research Projects Agency of the DOD. This

study also found that there is lack of coordination

in efforts at automation, resulting in functional

and technical system incompatibilities and lack of

standards for machine languages and programming languages, an important factor in convertibility problems.379

257 Heald, 1963 [242]., p. 42.

373 Hall, 1960 [233], p. 62.

379 See 'Where the Computer Fits in Command and Control," 1962 [643].

87
The hearing before the House Subcommittee on

Census and Government Statistics of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service which was

held on June 11, 1963, on the use of electronic data

processing equipment has several statements rele- vant to standardization and compatibility. The

Comptroller General of the United States, Mr.

Joseph Campbell, found that (1) lack of compatibility between magnetic tape systems used in

equipment of different manufacturers results, unless special additional equipment is designed to overcome this shortcoming or unless the data on

the magnetic tapes are converted to punched card

or paper tape media and then reconverted to magnetic tape for use in follow-on operations;" (2) "costs are incurred because of the need to convert

and reconvert files and records from one type of

data processing equipment to other models of

equipment;" and (3) "a central management office

is needed to properly exploit the possibilities of

Government-wide integration of systems and to plan for their development and growth." 380 On August 1, 1963, the same subcommittee submitted to the parent Committee its Interim Report

on the Use of Electronic Data Processing Equipment in the Federal Agencies (1963 [584] ) . The

subcommittee states, "In fact, in almost every problem area identified during the subcommittee hearings, contradictory testimony was given. Some

agencies, for instance, wanted more centralized

control, others wanted less. Some agencies testi- fied that common machine languages (COBOL,

FORTRAN, etc.) were timesavers; others indicated that they had not, as yet, found these languages particularly helpful. . . . On the subject

of standardization and compatibility, some witnesses testified that the Federal Government was making substantial progress in achieving greater

compatibility, whereas other witnesses believed

that considerably greater Federal initiative and

effort were needed in this area." These remarks are applicable not only to busi- ness or management data processing systems, but

also to the scientific and technical information

processing systems with which we are concerned

here. The basic form of the bibiographic entry has

received the attention of the Committee on Scientific Information, as was related in an earlier sec- tion of this report. As a result, a Standard for

Descriptive Cataloging of Technical Reports was

published in December 1963 by COSI ([195]).

There is still the necessity, however, for coding

the items of the entry in order to make possible the

"ordering out" or retrieval on those items.

We have also mentioned earlier the efforts of

Federal agencies to standardize the form and use

of the microfiche. Thus an agreement was reached

in 1963 by NASA and the AEC whereby a uniform

ratio of reduction in microphotocopying would

U.S. Congress, 1963 [585], p. 7-9.

allow the use of the same reading and printing

equipment on all microfiche versions of technical

reports regardless of the agency origin of the re- ports. This agreement was extended to OTS

(Clearinghouse) for use in its large program for

distributing DDC reports as well as other government-generated or -acquired material.

Another event of interest in the field of standardizing microforms is the publication of standards and specifications" for microphotography of

DOD engineering data. The DOD has issued;

throughout the years such standards and specifications, the most pertinent of which were assembled

and published in 1963 by the National Microfilm

Association. These documents, according to the

Association, "supply basic data as it relates to the

microphotographic reproduction of engineering

drawings and related materials in accordance with

the requirements of the Department of

Defense." 381 In 1962 the DOD was given the annual award

of the National Microfilm Association as its major recognition for outstanding service in the field of microreproduction. In the citation for the

award the DOD is credited with developing and

introducing "new and improved concepts of re- cording and reproduction of engineering documentation ; the collection, interpretation, coordination, development and publication of standard ! specifications ; industrywide acceptance of standardization of procedures and nomenclature. . . ."

3.9.2. Programs of the American Standards Association

(ASA)

The American Standards Association is a privately supported organization "acting as the national clearinghouse and coordinating agency for

voluntary standards in the United States." 382 Its

j main functions are to provide systematic means

for development of standards, to promote their

use, to coordinate standardization activities in the

j United States, and to act as a clearinghouse for j information on standards. "An American Standard is a voluntary national standard, arrived at by

common consent, and available for voluntary

use." 383 ASA Sectional Committee X3 on Computers

and Information Processing has seven working

subcommittees. Subcommittee X3.1 is on optical

character recognition (OCR) , having task groups on font development, printing, and applications.

Subcommittee X3.2 is concerned with coded charaeter sets and data formats and has one completed

standard, American Standard Code for Information Interchange (1963 [23]). This American!

Standard, 3.4r-1963, was approved by the ASA on June 17, 1963, with the Business Equipment Manu- \ facturers' Association as sponsor. The standard

presents the standard coded character set to be

381 National Microfilm Association, 1963 1414], p. iii. 882 Henriques, 1964 [251], p. 23. ^Utman, 1963 [605]-, p. 9. 88
STANDARD CODE

°o n0

0

0

1

0

1 0

0

1

1

1 o

n0

1 0

1

1

1 0

1

1

1

t * » 1

\Column 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 0 0 0 0 NUL DLE SP 0

, P rza 0 0 0 1 1 SOH DC i 1 A 0

0 0 1 0 2 STX 0C2 —-

2 B R b r 0 0 1 1 3 ETX 0 C3 3 c s

0 1 0 0 4 EOT 0C4 i o T d t 0 1 0 1 5 ENQ NAK % 5 E u e u 0 1 1 0 6 ACK SYN Q, f v f 0 1 1 1 7 BEL ETB 7 G W g

1 0 0 0 8 BS CAN ( 8 H X h x

1 0 0 1 9 HT EM ) 9 I Y i y 0 1 0 10 LF SS J z j z 0 1 1 1

VT ESC +

. K I k i

1 0 0 12 FF FS < L I

1 0 1 13 CR GS M ] m }

1 1 0 14 SO RS > N n 1

1 1 1 15 SI US / ? 0 0 DEL

used for information interchange among information processing systems, communication systems,

and associated equipment.

The standard specifies the correspondence of

seven-bit patterns with 128 graphics and control

codes; the graphics are for printable characters,

and the controls are to initiate appropriate equipment functions. The 128 -character code set covers 36 controls, 28 special characters, 10 numerics,

and the 26 alphabetic characters, leaving 28 bit

patterns unassigned. For example, the 7-bit positional order for the letter "R" from the high- to the low-order position is 1010010.

The standard does not define the means by which

the coded set is to be recorded in any physical me- dium nor does it include any redundancies. It does not define techniques for error control. It does not specify a standard collating sequence.

The code is referred to in the trade as "ASCII,"

pronounced "asky." (See figure 2.)

Bemer, in his first article on ASCII for Datamation, states that it may be expanded to 8 bits

and that representations in various media are not

denned. "The set can be collapsed in a regularized

and prescribed manner, if required, into a 6-bit set for existing 6-bit machines and other equipments,

to a 5-bit set for modification of existing Teletype

and Telex sets (particularly in Europe) , and even

to a 4-bit set." 384 In his second ASCII article Be- mer states that the code demands that "whenever

the computer talks with strange equipment, not of

its own kind, that it do so through the medium of

this code." 385 Hence, each machine will have to talk only with ASCII instead of the other internal codes, numbering now about sixty.

Bemer lists the following advantages for computer programming purposes: (1) manipulation

of graphics by classes; (2) fewer instructions in scans because of regularity and unique codes; (3)

faster and cheaper sorting when the collating

sequence is identical to the binary sequence of the

codes for the graphics; (4) reduction in the num384 Bemer, 1963 [49], p. 35.

385 Ibid, p. 40-41.

ber of routines required to be programmed, particularly for satellite equipment ; (5) fewer tables

for mixed codes in communications, particularly

those controlled by store-and-forward message

switching systems; (6) clarity of printed output,

particularly the reproduction of the source program in the printed record of processing; and (7) a tendency for keyboards to be identical with typing communications equipment.

Bemer comments also "that some other internal

code phis the translation mechanisms required

might be more economical for some equipment

then would ASCII internally. . . . The new

code has so many inherent economies that it might

pay for the redesign itself. IBM has perhaps the

least problem of any manufacturer ; with 9 differ- ent codes already in their various computers,

ASCII presents only 11 percent additional problems." 386 The International Business Machines Corps, in

the August 7, 1963, special issue on ASCII of its IBM Data Processor states that "IBM plans to provide Whatever means are practical to meet cus- tomer needs for using the standard code as soon

as possible after media standardization is approved by the American Standards Association."

To inject a less serious tone, perhaps, we note

that "the Federal Government, the military services, the manufacturers' society, and the computer

community are now engaged in an extended debate on just what the characters in a 6-bit set should be and how these characters should be en- coded within the set. There are already almost more variations on this basic set than there are

rabbits in the Western United States." 387 Subcommittee X3.2 of the ASA Sectional Committee X3 is also actively engaged in concern with

the problems of input-output media, including a code for perforated tape and specifications for the

physical dimensions of both 1-inch and ii/igth-inch

perforated tape; codes for magnetic tape and

punched cards; codes for both perforated and

magnetic tape for numerical machine tool control

and with specifications for the physical dimensions

of i/2-inch magnetic tape and for the 80- and 90-

column punched card and the edge-punched card.

Subcommittee X3.3 is concerned with digital

data transmission. It proposed the first American

standard in information processing, that on signaling speeds for data transmission. Standard

X3.1-1962 was approved August 1962 by the ASA

(1962 [26]) with the Business Equipment Manufacturers' Association as sponsor. The establishment of the speeds was considered necessary

to ensure compatibility between communication

channels and data terminal equipments of communications systems. The standard signaling

speeds are 600, 1200, 1800, 2000, 2400, and 3000

bauds. The statement concerning signal element

duration is that "a synchronous signal train at the

388 Ibid, p. 40. Patrick and Black, 1964 [450], p. 31.

89
interface between the data communications equipment and the data processing terminal equipment,

after synchronization is established, shall consist

of a sequence of marking and spacing signals, all of which are integral multiples of the signal ele- ment. The signal element duration is equal to the

reciprocal of the signaling rate in bauds."

Subcommittee X3.3 has six task groups on liai- son, glossary, data transmission formats, end-toend control characteristics, system performance

and digital data transmission speeds. Subcommittee X3.4 is concerned with common programming languages, to be discussed in section 3.9.4. Subcommittee X3.5 is on terminology and a glossary for information processing and hopes to produce a proposed American standard glossary soon. Subcommittee X3.6 is on automatic data processing problem description and analysis and has

a proposed standard which prescribes and defines

the symbols used on flowcharts to represent both

the sequence of operations and the flow of data

and paperwork of information processing systems.

The basic symbols include those for input/output,

processing, flow direction, and annotation. Specialized input/output symobls are those for the

punched card, magnetic and punched tapes, document, manual input, display, communication link,

and on-line and off-line storages. Specialized

processing symbols include decision, predefined

process, manual operation, and auxiliary operation. There are additional symbols for a connector and a terminal. (These symbols are somewhat

reminiscent of the graphical drawing symbols

allowed by the U.S. Patent Office, in its Guide

for Patent Draftsmen, for use on patent applications. The symbols recommended in the Guide

are for common materials, such as metal or cork,

electrical elements, and mechanical elements).

Subcommittee X3.7 is on magnetic ink character regonition (MICE) which is closely related

to the optical character recognition interests

of X3.1, taking over earlier work by the Office

Equipment Manufacturers Committee in conjunction with the American Bankers Association.

It is interesting to note that Sectional Committee X3 (SC X3) of the ASA was organized in

1960 to work on standards for software (program

instructions and operating procedures for information processing equipment) more than 18

months before Sectional Committee X6 (SC X6)

was organized to handle standards for hardware

(equipment, especially information processing

equipment)

Sectional Committee Z39 of the ASA covers Library Work and Documentation. Its purpose

is to develop standards for concepts, definitions,

terminology, letters and signs, practices, methods,

supplies, and equipment used in the field of li- brary work and the preparation and utilization

of documents. The committee is sponsored by the

Council of National Library Associations. Sectional Committee Z39 in the first quarter of 1963

was giving particular attention to four areas : abbreviations for periodical titles, abstracts, transliteration, and trade catalogs. The standard proposed for the transliteration of modern Russian

letters had been developed by the Subcommittee

on Transliteration in close cooperation with the

Royal Society of London.

The Subcommittee on Abstracts of the ASA

SC Z39 regards an abstract as an abbreviated

rendition of the significant content of a scientific paper or report, book or other documentary item.

The intention of the proposed standard on abstracts is to comment briefly on the function of an abstract, its character, content, style, and language, and on the publication of abstracts by

abstracting services. There is also a Subcommittee on Classification,

which held its first meeting in November 1963.

The Subcommittee on Transliteration of Z39 is concerned with transliteration from one language

alphabet to another: Greek to Roman, Russian I (Cyrillic) to Roman, Chinese to Roman, etc. Activities of this committee are aimed at developing a system acceptable to librarians and infor- ( mation specialists in the United States, with I hopes for coordination with similar activities in ! organizations abroad. The subcommittee aimed,

for example, to present a single new system of j! Cyrillic transliteration for modern Russian only

having worked on this program for some time,

it turned to consultation with British representa- j tives on the needs and aims of transliteration pro- | grams overseas. The need for standardization in this area is obvious, especially in light of the ever-increasing i ; and ever more important foreign language material to be processed. (The question of language

problems as such is discussed in section 4.1.2 of

this report.) The transliteration problem touches

not only conventional information handling sys- i terns but mechanical translation research programs also. Interests of the latter were expressed

by Kellogg when he said, "If we [U.S., Russian i MT programs] could agree on two simple things,

J we would both be happy. One is a uniform transliteration system, just for changing people's names

from one alphabet into the other. We have a sys- j tem by agreement within the Western World, the ! Russians use a different one. "Secondly, if we could agree to have them print a little box instead of a period at the end of a

sentence, and a comma that is a little more definite

than the kind we have now, and if we traded them 1 journal for journal, this would save us trouble

but we can't get agreement." 388 However, at- tempts to reach such agreement do continue.

Some standards have been promulgated successfully. Thus, American Standard Z39.1 was

sponsored by the ALA, approved on June 7, 1943, j and reaffirmed in 1959. It concerns the manner by

which periodicals are issued, numbered, and

388 U.S. House, 1960 [588], p. 61. 90
3

. named, and the manner by which their pages are

s

. numbered ; it requests that each periodical include

y a title page, table of contents, and index.

n American Standard Z39.4 was sponsored by the

jo Council of National Library Associations and ap16 proved on May 5, 1959. The criteria are for in- dexing books, periodicals, and other documentary

a materials. An index within the fields of library

l( j practice and documentation is defined as "a guide

j, to the contents of any reading matter or other

a

" documentary materials which provides a systey

' matic, sustained subject analysis of the contents

j | of such materials arranged according to alphaj. ibetical, chronological, numerical, or other chosen

iy order. Each entry is followed by page number,

' paragraph number, or other indicator showing the

u exact location of the reference." 389

j' The word "subject" as used in the above defini-

;' tion is defined as "a unit concept found in, or

j derived from, the material indexed. The unit

j concept may be found or expressed as a thematic

, topic, a name, a date, the first line of a poem, the

J title of a work, an expression coined to give the

r gist of the material indexed, etc." 390 The matters

I covered concerning the content, organization and

! style of indexes include the entries (headings, subj headings, and modifications) , the alphabetizing or

j filing, inversion of headings or names of compa-

., nies or organizations, references (mainly to

; pages), typography, and cross references.

I Z 39.5—1963, "American Standard for Periodical Title Abbreviations," has also been issued.

' "General rules are provided in the standard for

j the omission of letters, punctuation, conflicting

|T title words, and multilingual abbreviations . . . ' The product of two years' research by a committee

' of experts, the new standard contains more than

'j 2400 abbreviations for words commonly found in

periodical titles." 391

1 In 1960 the American Standards Association

y and the International Standards Organization

, decided to form joint committees on computers

and information processing. The groups involved

a were the ASA SC X3 and the ISO Technical

^ Committee 97 (TC 97). Scopes for these comv mittees "were adopted in organization meetings 's held in 1960 and 1961. ISO assigned the Secrey tariat of TC97 to the United States and the

ie ASA, which in turn recognized the Business

Equipment Manufacturers Association (BEMA)

lf as sponsors of X3 and TC 97, with X3 to develop

a proposed standards for both the U.S. and the

e world." 392

II Formal standardization work in photography,

' at least in the United States, was first initiated in

1938 under the procedures of the ASA. The com-

, mittee established at that time was designated the

[3 ASA Sectional Committee on Standardization in

I the Field of Photography, Z38; the committee

J 889 American Standards Association, Inc., 1959 [22], p. 5.

d

390 Ibid.

391 Scientific Information Notes 6, 3, 17 (1964). ^Utman, 1963 [605], p. 9.

operated for more than 10 years under the sponsorship of the Optical Society of America and was

responsible for the development of over a hundred

standards. On November 30, 1950, ASA Committee Z38 was disbanded with four new committees replacing it, and a fifth was organized on June 25, 1953. ASA Sectional Committee PH 5 on Photographic Eeproduction of Documents was

given _ responsibility for standards "for photographic materials, apparatus, and processes

pertaining to production, use, storage, and pres- ervation of document reproduction." Sectional

Committee PH 5 has been of considerable interest

m the field of documentation owing to its standards on the various kinds of film. The American

Standard PH 5.3 is the one of most direct interest

to endeavors in microphotography although it was

intended basically to be of interest for motion

picture film.

3.9.3. Programs of the International Standards

Organization (ISO)

Donker Duyvis wrote in 1954, as the Secretary

General of the International Federation for Documentation, on /Standardisation as a Tool of Scientific Management. He gives as a positive definition of standardization: "to bring production to a higher level, to guide and plan judiciously the

necessary diversity in order to promote harmony m variety, and to assure that human labor will be

used in a worthy way." 393 He lists as subjects

belonging to standards in librarianship : the material and layout of documents; the elements and

editing of their contents; their arrangement, filing

and storage, and various mechanical devices.

Donker Duyvis stresses that ". . . particularly for

librarians and documentalists, standardization

loses half of its value if it is not done on a worldwide basis." 394 It may also be of interest to note an example for

documentation for standards. "The late F. Donker Duyvis, former Secretary General of the Inter- national Federation for Documentation, united his

interest in providing documentation service for

standards with that of the ISO, and became

chairman of ISO's Committee for Index Cards

for standards that are issued by Member

Associations." 395 The International Standards Organization

(ISO) had in 1954 a technical committee on documentation called ISO/TC 46. In that year, ISO

in collaboration with UNESCO published draft

recommendations for the layout of periodicals, for

bibliographical citations (the citing of titles of

documents), and for bibliographical references

(the identification of publications, considered

either as bibliographical units in themselves or as parts of larger works) ; it published also ISO/E4,

accepted by the ISO Council as its recommended

International Code for the Abbreviation of Titles

393 Donker Dujvis, 1954 [176], p. 410.

394 Ibid, p. 426. s^Murra, 1962 [402], p. 407.

91
of Periodicals. These examples are cited as evi- dence of continuing international activity in the

standardization of documentation. "Progress in

international standardization work in the field of

documentation has been steady, if not spectacular;

since the war, there have been five meetings of

Technical Committee 46 (Documentation) of the

International Organization for Standardization

. . . but much of the real work has been done by

correspondence and in special meetings of working parties." 396 In 1954 Lloyd ( [346] ) prepared a selective list of standard-practice recommendations available

from a baker's dozen of standards-issuing organizations. He noted that of the many problems

which plague the technical editor, those which in- volve layout, references, transliterations, abbreviations, proof corrections, and the like can be simplified by the adoption of standard practices. The

Lloyd list includes seven recommendations for

abbreviation of periodical titles, two for abstracts

and synopses, six for bibliographic citation practice, five for symbols and abbreviations, and four

for Cyrillic alphabet transliteration. The then

pending ISO recommendations thought to be most

urgently required were: ISO R4 (1954) : International code for the abbreviation of titles of periodicals; ISO Draft Recommendation 23 (1953) : Bibliographical citations; ISO Draft Recommendation 24 (1953) : Bibliographical references;

ISO Draft Recommendation 3 (1953) : Layout of

periodicals.

Lloyd remarked that "some of the most useful

recommendations are not as well known as they

should be, partly because they are not always

readily available and partly through lack of

publicity." 397 New items considered for standards work by

ISO/TC 46 at its meeting in Brussels in 1954 in- cluded not only the layout of index cards, proof

correction signs, and transliteration of Oriental

alphabets, already mentioned, but also two other

proposals, which, however, were deferred not only on grounds of overlap with other organizations

but also because of serious question as to the feasibility of reaching agreement. These were for

'canons' or 'guiding principles' for cataloging and

classification rules. With respect to the latter, in

particular, the FID General Secretary stated that

his organization "had long been studying the problem, and had found it impossible to reach much

international agreement yet on such philosophical

subjects." 398 In addition, ". . . At the recent Brussels meeting of ISO/TC 46, it transpired that criticism of

Draft ISO Rec. 24, Bibliographical references

(full references) had been so severe as to necessi- tate a complete redrafting . . ." 399 More successful, though, were "The Code for Abbreviation and

3M Llovd, 1955 [347], p. 49.

297 Lloyd, 1954 [346], p. 282.

393 Lloyd, 1955 [3471, p. 53.

3M Lloyd, 1955 [347],, p. 50.

hayout of periodicals, with Bibliographical cita- tions and Bibliographical references, [which] were

regarded by Unesco as sufficiently important to warrant a special grant, and the ISO/TC 46 Secre- j tariat has recently discharged its obligation to Unesco by issuing these, together with an introduction, in the form of a report to Unesco entitled

Standardization in the domain of docvmenta- j Hon . . ." 40° In the field of microreproduction, ISO has also I been active: "In April 1950 the International

Standards Organisation (ISO), meeting jointly

with the International Federation for Documenta

tion (FID) at Ascona, established a subcommittee; of Technical Committee 46 to draft recommendations for (a) the terminology of microcopies and

(b) the size of the microcopies. The meeting of

the ISO committee at Paris in June 1955 advanced,

but did not conclude, these studies. In 1953 the

American Standards Association established a new

Committee (PH 5) to develop standards for ma-i

terials, apparatus and processes connected with the; production, use, storage and preservation of photographic documentary reproductions." 401 The ISO has established standards in this area:

. . . "ISO Mire (Test object) is made up of a 25 x

50 mm area with lines of artificial 'words' in varying sizes of type, each 'word' consisting of four

symbols in the form of a conventional (ISO) octa-; gon with two diagonal lines, replacing ordinary

letter characters, which can often be guessed at even when not strictly legible ... ISO MicrM

mire (Micro Test Object) is a carefully prepared;

microcopy (1: 10 reduction) of the ISO Test ob-i

ject, Strips of the Micro Test object are then

mounted in the form of a pattern on a chequered;;!

black-and-white ground, and this chart is used for

testing image sharpness, etc., in microfilm cameras!

and reading apparatus." 402 Donker Duyvis wrote (1954 [176]) of his hope;

for the ASA to cooperate closely with the ISO ill formulating standards for reading apparatus.;;

Lloyd reports, "Two new draft proposals referring

to the testing of microcopy reading apparatus are now under consideration by the nineteen member!

countries of the main Technical Committee

ISO/TC 46 . . . ." 403 Furthermore, "The subcommittee [ISO/TC

46/SCI Documentary Reproduction Subcommit-i

tee] unanimously adopted a recommendation from

a three-man . . . commission to abandon the! terms 'Microcard,' 'Microcarte,' and 'Microprint:;! as confusing, indefinite and possibly also propri-ij

etary. In place of these, it accepted a definition"

of the word 'Microfiche' (same word in both

French and English . . . ." 404 A few citations to standardization on translitj

eration seem appropriate inasmuch as the transw» Ibid, p. 49-50. TM Born, 1956 [69], p. 168. «2Llovd, 1955 [347], p. 51-52.

Lloyd, 1955 [347], p. 51.

104 Ibid, p. 51-52.

92
n literation of the languages of the world has always

0 caused so much heated controversy. Frontard, of

e. the French Standards Association, reviewed inter-

:o

; national efforts toward standardization of trans-

> literations, beginning with Recommendation

d ISO/R 9 of the Technical Committee 46 on Docu-

\ mentation of the International Standards Organization (1961 [205] ) . ISO/R 9 was published in

jo 1955 and recommended an international system

1 for the transliteration of Cyrillic characters.

|j Progress was reported on the transliteration of

j. Greek and the nonvocalic languages, such as

$ Hebrew and Arabic. At a meeting of ISO/TC 46

j. in London in June 1960, Chinese, as an ideographic

;( j nonsyllabic language, was regarded as incapable

){ of transliteration and amendable only to transcripJ cion, etymologically shifting from writing in one

% alphabet to writing in another.

, Neiswender wrote in 1962 that the ISO/R 9

J "was a landmark in the history of transliteration,

1( for it represented the first system based on internaj. tional agreement, and it secured the approval of

20 linguistically dissimilar countries . . . ." 405

,, However, the ISO system, although adopted by

j UNESCO for its bibliographical publications and

,. library catalogs, "did not secure general acceptance

j among English-speaking countries, largely because

, of the long-standing United States commitment

^ to the Library of Congress system and because of

jl previous attempts by the Royal Society to formu-

; late a British standard."

Neiswender gives as organizations interested in

transliteration (in addition to LC), the British

j Standards Institution, the Board of Geographic

I Names (U.S.A.), the New York Public Library,

| the Slavic Review, and Mathematical Reviews.

i She also distinguishes transcription "as the process

by which some idea is conveyed of pronounciation

as well as of spelling from transliteration as the

process by which characters in one alphabet are

j arbitrarily and unambiguously represented by

' characters in those of another, disregarding

* phonetic accuracy." 406 Finally we note recent ISO activities paralleling

t those of ASA for character recognition and codes

for information interchange:

c "The ISO Technical Committee 97 . . . just

I concluded a series of meetings in New York City

m

• • • World wide standards on optical and mag16 netic ink character recognition and business maj) chines were drafted by the group . . .

Iv "The ISO draft proposal for magnetic ink character recognition. Two different type fonts

, E13B and CMC-7—are being proposed. . . . "The new code (ISO) for information inter-

, change includes recommendations for both six-bit

and seven-bits sets . . . Some of the code positions

5 have been left unassigned to meet the needs of in- dividual countries . . . the code is generally compatible with the American Standard Code for InNp'^wender

406 Ibid, p. 37.

formation Interchange (ASCII) approved by the

ASA last year." 407

3.9.4. Programs of Other Organizations

An organization complementary in its specialized field to the ISO is the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), whose Technical

Committee 53 is concerned with computers and

information processing. The IEC recommends

electrical standards only, whereas the ISO recom- mends international standards in all fields of en- deavor except electrical. The chairman of IEC/

TC 53 is A. B. Credle of the United States, who

provided this information to the June 1963 Communications of the ACM: TC/53 held its first meeting in London in 1961. It has four subcommittees: SC 53A on digital input/output equipments, SC 53B on digital data transmission, SC

53C on analog equipments for information processing systems, and SC 53D on input/output

media. A joint steering committee has been set up, composed of the chairmen, secretaries, and

technical advisors of IEC/TC 53, ISO/TC 97,

and ISO/TC 95 (office machines), to avoid conflicts of interest and duplication of effort. We note further that : "To facilitate the translation of papers from one language into others,

. . . the most important aspect is a precise^ unified

terminology. In particular, the use of international dictionaries is of the greatest importance.

An example is the International Electrical Engineering Dictionary, which is now in its second

edition and is presently being published in a third

edition by the International Electrical Engineering Commission." 408 By 1958 the International Federation for Documentation had published a bibliography of standards on documentation, with M. Schuchmann re- sponsible for the publication (1961 [505]). In

1961, with the financial assistance of UNESCO,

FID published a supplement to the bibliography,

bringing it up to date. Part I of the bibliography

has a listing of the standards classified by countries and ISO recommendations, supplemented by

a list of all editions of the UDC recognized by

FID; within the national groups, the standards

are listed by serial number. In part II the standards are listed in a systematic arrangement by

UDC. _ Each standard is listed only once, under

its main aspect.

ECMA (the European Computer Manufacturers Association) came into being officially in May

1961 and has as its main purpose the development

of methods and procedures for facilitating and

standardizing the use of data processing systems.

Information on the organization of ECMA was

transmitted to the June 1963 Communications of

the ACM by C. G. Holland-Martin, of Leo Computers, Ltd., of the Coordinating Committee, and

D. Hekimi, the Secretary General. The technical

407 Creating Order out of Confusion, 1964 [1481, p. 26.

408 Tareev, 19-62 [555], p. 339.

208-371—66 7 93
committees are : TCI, input and output codes committee; TC2, general programming languages

committee; TC3, flow charting committee; TC4,

character recognition committee; TC5, ALGOL

Committee; TC6, COBOL Committee; and TC7,

MICR (magnetic ink character recognition).

Programming electronic data processing sys- tems is no simple task. As a consequence, programming languages have been devised both to provide means for noncomputer-oriented programmers to use such systems as well as to make

instructions to computers less complex and tedious

for trained programmers. The first of these languages, quite logically, was developed for scientific and mathematical application; Fortran

(Formula, Translation) first followed by ALGOL

I Algorithmic Zanguage). Subsequently COBOL

(Common business Oriented Zanguage) has been

developed as a general-purpose language, and a number of more specific problem-oriented languages have also been considered.

Actually, there had been earlier efforts for the

interchange of programs, beginning with those

written in machine-oriented assembly language.

This was demonstrated by the establishment of

the SHARE organization, an informal cooperative among users of the IBM 704. Early in 1954, a group of aircraft companies in the U.S.A. found,

while replacing IBM 701's by 704's, that considerable duplication and redundancy had existed in

the usage of the earlier machine.409 The cooperating groups (groups of functioning users and

groups oriented to particular applications or disci- plines) found that each member acquired means

of using his machine much more efficiently in re- turn for their exchanges.

COBOL (a procedure-oriented and machineindependent programming language) , had its ori- gin in a meeting convened on May 28 and 29,

1959, by the Department of Defense to consider

the standardization of commercial data processing

languages. "The COBOL System is composed

of two elements ... a source program written in

COBOL by the customer, and a manufacturer's

compiler which translates the source program into a machine language program capable of running on a particular computer.410 The "compiler" is sometimes called a "translator." Wofsey made

an analysis of COBOL compilers for four computers: UNIVAC II (Sept. 1960), UNIVAC Solid

State 80 (Sept. 1960), RCA 501 (Dec. 1960), and

RCA 301 (June 1961) to discover differences

which would necessitate changes if a source program from one machine were processed for an- other with its compiler. Differences ran from 1 to 44 in number, averaging 21.5, with a mean of

23.Subcommittee X3.4 of the ASA X3 Sectional

Committee on Computers and Information Processing is devoting itself to the standardization of

*»Bemer, 1960 [50],, p. 338-340.

«° Wofsey, 1962 [651], p. 1.

programming languages. It has task groups for

establishing the United States positions in regard

to ALGOL, FORTRAN, COBOL, and the APT

(Automatically Programmed Zool) System with

numerically controlled machine tools. Utman re- ports 411 that "Internationally, TC 97/SC5 has

prepared a Programming Language Survey which

is now being published in professional journals,

and has invited IFIP/WG 2.1 (a Working Group

of the International Federation of Information

Processing Societies) and X3.4 to provide draft

proposals for ALGOL, FORTRAN, and COBOL

for consideration as international draft recommendations." (TC 97/SC5 refers to Technical

Committee 97 of the International Standards Organization and its Subcommittee 5.) Indicative of the importance of programming

languages is the experience of Minder and Lazorick in the automation of the acquisitions department of the library of the Pennsylvania State

University. They used the FORTRAN language

with the IBM 7070, 7074, 1401, and 1620 generalpurpose computers available on the campus. They

conclude that "ADI, ALA, and SLA could do a

service by forming a joint committee to study this

whole problem of computer language for library

operations. I suspect that FORTRAN is the in- ferior language. I also suspect that others will

senselessly duplicate our efforts due to the lack of

coordination and standardization." 412 An indication of the activity regarding standardization with the electronic data processing in- dustry in the United States as seen from England

is given by Pearce Wright (1963 [654] ). He

states that "Trade associations, professional bodies, etc., are striving with the American Standards

Association to provide acceptable standards by

which users can assess equipment in the field. . . . Perhaps the most arduous and complex project

in this amorphous mass is on programming languages. Tremendous effort is being poured into

resolving the tangle surrounding the English

language programming system COBOL." Wright

regards calling the COBOL language a standard

as a mockery since there are

i so many revised

versions of COBOL reports and sub-sets of the

language . . . ." Still, he says, "People engaged

in this work hotly refuted suggestions that one monster might succeed another, and expressed the

belief that sub-sets of COBOL should also work

adequately on the large number of smaller in- stallations." 413 One organization interested in progress in standardization and destined to take an active part in

such work is the National Federation of Science

Abstracting and Indexing Services. In 1963 it published its NFSAIS Standard No. 63-1,

Transliteration of the Modern Russian Alphabet,

claiming that "Its principal virtues are its wide

acceptability and its minimum use of diacritical

m Utman, 1963 [605], p. 12.

412 Minder and Lazorick, 1963 [389]l p. 456.

413 Wright, 1963 [654],, p. 10. 94
marks. It represents a slight modification of the

Russian portion of British Standard Institution's

(British Standard 2979: 1958) system for (modern) Cyrillic-English transliteration." ([410])

This represents only one area of NFSAIS interest

in standardization for information handling sys- tems.

4. Problem Areas

The current problem areas which can readily be

discerned include both those that are general with

respect to any information handling system

whether manual or mechanized and those that are more specific to mechanized systems and the pres- ent and future prospects for machine language

compatibility. In both the general and specific

aspects, the problems of problem definition, of

languages, and of human factors and user accept- ance are paramount.

We will recapitulate here some of the findings,

current and proposed activities and efforts and

prior experiences which have a bearing on the

problems, difficulties and complexities of working

toward mechanized-systems compatibility. All of

these difficulties are of course aggravated by ". . . (1) a rapid increase in the record to be controlled,

involving new terminology, taking new forms, and

appearing under widely dispersed auspices ; (2) an

increasing need to employ finer detail, to incorporate the new terminology more promptly, and to

retrieve documents from unanticipated points of

view; and (3) technical developments in the area

of information theory, of information processing

equipment, and in library science and its tools." 1

4.1. General Problem Areas

The problem of problems is that of problem

definition itself. First is the need for recognition

that cooperation, compatibility and convertibility

should extend through the whole complex cycle of

information handling from its initial generation to

its ultimate use. Adkinson, reporting on studies

made by the American Institute of Physics and by

the American Institute of Biological Sciences

states that common to them both has been: ". . . the recognition by leading scientists in the fields involved (a) that the information problem is very

complex; (b) that simple statements like 'what we

need is more abstracts' or 'what we must do is mechanize' or 'scientists should write less,' if taken

in isolation, ignore a whole host of variables and

vastly oversimplify the problem; and (c) that any

long-range or lasting solution must consider all phases of information recording, dissemination,

and control." 2 As Adkinson states further, the first area of

problem definition requiring attention is that of

acquiring "much deeper understanding of the

strengths and weaknesses of the whole complex

of scientific information services and practices and

*Maloney, 1959 [368], p. 1365.

2 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 102.

of the true requirements of scientists." 3 Such un- derstanding is prerequisite to the determination of

the needs of the generators of scientific information

(from bench scientist to program director), the

needs of those who communicate or prepare secondary publications and critical reviews, the requirements of those who disseminate, acquire, store, search and retrieve the literature, the needs of

those who use and evaluate the products of the

information handling services.

This implies that network requirements, system

requirements, user requirements, and implementation or equipment requirements should be investigated at all possible levels and for all types of

users. We can expect to find important differences

between international, national, regional, and local

level requirements; between interdisciplinary areas and within specific disciplines or groups of

related disciplines ; between interdisciplinary areas and within specific disciplines or groups of re- lated disciplines; between research, development,

application, evaluation, and teaching; and, particularly, between mm^on-orientation and the more traditional disciplinary approaches. The

differing needs of expert, practitioner, apprentice

or intern, student and teacher; of the grant administrator, project coordinator, research manager, product development or marketing specialist ; of the patent attorney, librarian, documentalist, scientific information officer, all require sys- tematic consideration.

"Effecting coordination within the Federal es- tablishment is complicated by the varying basic

missions of different scientific information services. Some are permitted to serve only their parent

agencies or some well-defined group of users; others work primarily for the benefit of their own

agencies, but have some official responsibility to- ward the scientific community as a whole, still others are set up specifically to serve science and

scientists everywhere. Any overall coordinating

effort must try to combine maximum value to the

national scientific effort with the minimum jeopardy to the various programs' individual responsibilities." 4 Eecognition of these many different objectives, even of missions, requires a corresponding recognition of differing requirements, needs, and potentialities. Thus, for example, "large organized programs of research are the exception and the

technical report, which plays so important a role

in engineering and in areas of the physical sciences

that are oriented toward technical development,

is a relatively unimportant channel for biomedical

communication . . . New forms of communication and new types of services that serve other

scientific communities effectively will not necessarily be appropriate to, or of comparable use- fulness in, the biomedical sciences." 5

'Ibid, p. 109.

4 Scientific Information Notes 4, 4, 1 (1962).

5 "Communication Problems in Biomedical Research", 1963

[403], p. 9.

95
"Our first problem and the major one in the field of information retrieval is to define the system re- quirements." 6

4.1.1. Difficulties of Problem Definition A single example may suffice to indicate that the

questions of improved cooperation, compatibility, or convertibility are inextricably related to consideration of the whole complex of information

handling activity. Let us consider that these objectives are to be sought in a network of services. After studying the possibilities for automation

in the Library of Congress, the survey team re- ported: "This concept of linking many libraries

and other users together for mutual support and

cost reduction raises a different set of data-transfer

design considerations. Probably high data rates, in bursts, are desirable in order to avoid the cost burden of having long distance communication

channels open for long periods of time. Compatibility with the local data links will certainly not

be insurmountable but must be planned far ahead

even though the actual realization of the network

feature of the system may come at a later date." 7 What are the problems, delays, costs and availabilities of transmission facilities, given that the

requestor or user is at a remote location ? A centralized facility may have available closed-circuit

TV, facsimile transmission systems, data trans- mittal services, telephone or teletype leased lines,

various types of postal service. Do all, or even a

majority, of its customers have suitable receiver

equipment to obtain the transmitted information

within a reasonable scale of both time and cost? If not, can the products of such centralized facilities be transmitted in various different ways suit- able to the needs of a variety of customers?

Over and above these physical characteristic

and economic feasibility considerations there is a

special two-fold substantive system problem here,

that of knowing what the local needs of the vari- ous customers are and of setting these local needs

in the context of the network. With respect to the

definition and evaluation of special-purpose re- quirements, any systems-planning effort involving

improvements in cooperation, compatibility, or

convertibility must ask whether these are merely

matters of parochial practice and prejudice, or whether they do indeed reflect valid local needs.

In many cases, what might appear to be the protection of vested interests or merely resistance to change can instead be the result of a valid concern

for the special interests of a specialized clientele. For example, a report-numbering system resulting

in identifying codes too cumbersome or too long

for handling in a machine-compiled or machinegenerated index format may be an important

source of identification of organizational cognizance, of considerable usefulness to contractors of an important agency such as the AEC.

"Genereaux, 1962 [214], p. 44

'King, 1964 [319], p. 238.

In other cases, again, tools such as authority lists and thesauri painstakingly developed to serve the

broad overall interests of a large collection or a particular community or profession may nevertheless be far too general to meet the needs of a special

library or specialized information center which

nevertheless must receive material from and contribute to the larger collection or community.

The experience of Lunin and Stovall of the

departments of pathology and physics of the M. D.

Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute of the

University of Texas at Houston (1963 [362]) seems to indicate that complete interchange of

indexing vocabularies is not possible. They constructed a thesaurus for the fields of radiobiology,

radiation physics, and trace metals as these relate to the cancer problem. They tried to make their

thesaurus compatible in terminology with the

descriptors of the NLM, the thesaurus of the National Institutes of Health, and the Radiology

Vocabulary of ASTIA. They regard compatibility as implying the "use of the same word although

number (singular or plural) or form (noun or

adjective) may vary."

They found that compatibility for general ter- minology ( all subject areas covered with the exception of tumors) was 37, 43 and 32 percent, respectively, for NLM, NIH, and ASTIA. For neoplasia terminology the figures were 21, 16, and less than 1 percent, respectively. Lunin and Stovall

therefore conclude that "national thesauri cannot

be used for indexing individual reprint collections

of researchers. Examination of the three national

vocabularies demonstrated that (a) information

in several areas did not appear in sufficient detail,

(b) many terms desired for use in the institutional

program were not included in the national

thesauri, and (c) researchers in this institution

did not always agree with the organization of

terminology in the three thesauri." 8 Accommodation to local special-purpose needs can range all the way from recognition that

"ASTIA does a general cataloging operation on

technical reports that it receives. However, this

general cataloging is not in sufficient depth or

detail to satisfy the requirements of large research

and development organizations. Further ... to wait for ASTIA cataloging would be too long for

most activities," 9 through the practice of the

Library of Congress which, if it "rejects a heading

supplied by a special library . . ., prints the re- jected heading along with its own heading because

the Library of Congress officially recognizes that

the purposes of a special library may require a degree of specificity in indexing not necessary or

desirable for its own general purposes," 10 to questions of the equipment facilities readily available.

Altmann says, for example, that, "not only within the framework of the technical information

8 Lunin and Stovall, 1963 [362], p. 190.

9 Langenbeek, 1962 [329], p. 296-297. "Taube, 1951 [559], p. 67. 96
office itself, but also within the entire installation,

the operations must be made compatible with the

existing machine system. These adjustments dictated by economy and budget limitations in addition to the peculiar subject interests in each in- stallation make it difficult to follow those who

advocate the centralization of services."

He continues, "While national centers proceed

to develop retrieval systems and methods which

they deem appropriate for their own operations,

they fail to consider that in most medium-sized

research and development installations, the services of the technical information office do not and

will not justify the acquisition of a separate computer. Because the information office must utilize the system which its agency has installed for a

variety of activities, economic considerations and

good managerial practice place restrictions on

the form of processes and procedures as well as on

the type of auxiliary equipment used to produce

punched cards or punched ribbons . . . "If national centers continue to establish their

systems without accepting mutual compatibility

as an overruling principle and without a definite

program for the easy utilization of their catalogs

and bibliographies in other and especially the

smaller document collections and services, the

technical information offices of research, development, and engineering establishments cannot help

but develop their own operations in conformity

with the particular missions and tasks of the laboratories, using such tools of automation as they can afford." 11 Freeman points even more specifically to a major

implication of general versus local need in the

Federal sponsorship of improved cooperation,

compatibility, and convertibility. He says, ". . . It does not seem unreasonable that many agencies

with major research programs have, and will continue to develop information systems specifically

designed and oriented to their own internal control

purposes. Attempts to standardize these different

systems or to enforce compatibility among such

systems must recognize the basic fact that management practices and procedures are necessarily

different." 12 The approach to the problems of problem defi- nition based on viewing the "whole complex" in- volves also the recognition that the handling of the

new forms cannot safely be divorced from at least the appreciation of the problems of the handling

of the traditional literature ; that the processes of

handling, from the original generation through

publication, dissemination, storage, selection, and

ultimate use are typically interdependent, and

that, as of today, we lack not only objective data

but even a consistent methodology by which such

data might be obtained. Some representative cor- roborative opinions on these points are as follows

"At the present time our knowledge of the uses

"Altmann, 1963 [121. p. 24. "Freeman, 1963 [203], p. 220.

to which literature is put, and the demands made

upon bibliographic resources by those who consult

them, are lamentably fragmentary. One cannot

talk intelligently about the problems of classifica- tion or devise effective schemes for the several

branches of knowledge until he can answer with some degree of certainty the question : how does

any consultant search for and use the literature

that theoretically is at his command? To this

the users themselves can give no valid answer. Conjecture and generalization based upon subjective opinions are not enough." 13 ". . . We must know more about the traditional

dissemination pattern if we expect to improve it in a systematic way. Measurements and means

for continually monitoring the composition, volume, and rates of growth of the literature must be

established before any comprehensive plans or

policy decisions can be made. . . ." 14 "The communication problems of Government

are inextricably intertwined with those outside the

Government. Both the Government and the non- Government communities are concerned with the same total body of information ; the progress made

in each contributes vitally to the other." 15 "It is anticipated that systematic study of user needs and characteristics as well as research on

the logic of information systems will have to be

undertaken. Methods of classifying, abstracting,

indexing, storing, retrieving and disseminating in- creasingly formidable amounts of information

will have to be studied in detail. No scheme for

accomplishing these operations adequate to the

needs of the scientific community is yet at hand." 16 "The most pressing need therefore is for the

development of reliable methods for studying and

assessing requirements, for determining the role of information and information services in science,

and for measuring the value of information and

the utility and effectiveness of present and proposed services." 17 "It is a curious and unfortunate fact that libraries of today have virtually no way of knowing

how well they are performing from the point of

view of what the user ought to be getting from

the system. In general, there is no way of knowing how much information responsive to a subjectoriented request is not found. Possibly one of the

most important consequences of automation will

be to provide a capability for maintaining use his- tory and for implementing measurements on a sampling basis in order to install a good system

of quality control in the library's operations." 18 Specific attempts to achieve greater compatibility or convertibility between present systems are

likely to be doomed to fail (or, worse, to set back

future improvements) in the absence of far more

objective and more detailed information than we

"Shera, 1951 [523], p. 88-89. "Bourne, 1962 [73], p. 162. « Crawford Report, 1963 [465] (App.). p. 33.

16 Stanford Research Institute. 1963 [542], p. 9-10. "U.S. Senate. 1960 [5921, p. 110. "King, 1963 [318], p. 23.

97
have today on present requirements, present costs, and present effectiveness. Even where the application or proposed operations are new, relatively

self-contained and capable of implementation

without too serious an involvement in the redoing

of prior work, the lack of definitive data for

problem definition is critical. In one of the relatively few examples of proposed cooperative action in the establishment of a mechanized system to be shared by various specific contributors and users, the initial study team was surprised by the nature, extent, and implications of this problem : "What are library services

worth to industry? How much are they willing

to pay? What is the average dollar value of

various kinds of library services? How much

money is saved by using library services compared

with not using them? No one seems to have an- swers to these questions. We have found no evidence of controlled evaluations, and industrial

librarians found estimates difficult to make,

whether for themselves or for the proposed co- operative system." 19 In a fundamental sense, current difficulties of

problem definition stem from lack of knowledge

and objective data about requirements, about the

parameters of the problem, about the value of existing services and systems, about the effectiveness

of these systems, about suitable techniques for

measurement and evaluation, and about suitable

criteria of effectiveness and value.

4.1.2. Problems of Language

The problems of language in the mechanization

of scientific and technical information handling

are manifold. There are problems of source language and identification ; input languages and media ; indexing and classificat ory languages ; coding

languages ; internal machine languages ; programming languages ; and the devices and languages of

retrieval, display and output. To an important

extent, however, problems of language, of various

levels of language, and of various languages affect

all systems for the handling of scientific and technical information.

Incoming documentary items received at the

library or information center, or at an abstracting or indexing service, will have been written in some

particular natural language or in more than one

language. Whether or not the center or service

has a mechanized system, the problem of source language and identification are particularly severe when there are many foreign language inputs.

For compatibility to be achieved between such

systems there must be agreement reached as to conventions and practices. Is the title to be re- tained in the original language, given as translated, or both, and if so how is the one form to be distinguished from the other? Can a standardized system be established for transliterations

18 "A Joint College/Industry Library With Automata," 1964

even if only for author names? Crowther suggested in 1958, for example? that "the standardization of a system of translation of Russian author's

names, or at least the reduction of the number of

alternative systems in use to no more than two, is rather an urgent matter for scientific documentation . . . The I.C.S.U. Abstracting Board and its member journals are agreed on the value of adopting a uniform system. . . ." 20 Other typical questions and difficulties that re- quire resolution, especially for mechanized sys- tems, range from standardized spellings of place names to the increased size of the input alphabet

that will be required to accommodate non-Roman

alphabets and the use of diacriticSj and questions

of how to sort on compound foreign names and

how to handle foreign abbreviations, including

the case of the use of diphthongs as initials. Parenthetically, we may note that in terms of in- ternational cooperation, other nationalities have

complementary difficulties to face. Thus, for

treatment of foreign language references at VINITI, "Neither the author's first name nor his

initials are given in the Russian transcription

because (unless the full name is known) it is often impossible to find adequate equivalents for

the initials." 21 From the standpoint of international collaboration, cooperation, and compatibility, or of systems

at any level accepting as direct inputs items originally prepared in various foreign languages, it

is clear that serious consideration should be given

to either direct use of, or convertibility into, an

artificial documentary language or notation

scheme for identification, filing, and subsequent

selection. This scheme would preferably be one

involving numeric rather than alphabetic file

j ordering. Thus, for example, Mills points out

that "UDC is an international language in that

a file organized by UDC makes sense in any language. One organized on the basis of alphabetical

order of terms for example suffers a national

limitation." 22 In the discussions following the Mills presenta- j tion at a Rutgers Graduate Library School semi- \ nar, "Mr. Rigby thought that the neglect of UDC \ in the United States was due partly to the fact that

Americans, enjoying one language, did not realize j sufficiently the problems raised by the use of many Ij different languages and the usefulness of a neutral,

intermediate language as an aid to retrieval in

such a situation." 23 Further, Wooster suggested

j| consideration of the use of the UDC as an inter- t mediate language for purposes of translation.

"We could go from an English term to its UDC

number and from that to its subject description

in other languages ... In France they are seri- ously proposing the use of UDC as an interlingua

for mechanical translations." 24

20 Crowther, 1959 [150], p. 487.

21 Mikhailov, 1959 [384], p. 519.

22 Mills, 1964 [388], p. 12.

23 Ibid, p. 106.

24 Ibid, p. 105. 98
In the area of cooperative actions involving

preparation, announcement, and exchange of technical translations, one additional special problem

may be mentioned. This is the question of providing copies to other cooperating organizations

involving questions of makeup, since in many

smaller agencies only the translated text may be

available for distribution in multiple copies and

reinterpolation of drawings, data tables, equations and the like may be difficult if not impossible.

Reed speaks to this point, and raises the further difficulties of copyright and unauthorized

translation, as follows : "Many different ways are used in making up translations. It would be very

useful if information about them could be as- sembled and perhaps some recommended procedures reached. I am personally interested at the

moment in the possibilities of microfilm in both

making up and lending translations. Unfortunately, if you need to go outside your own organization to have a microfilm made, and the translation is unauthorized, you will find no commercial

supplier who is willing to break the law for your

sake!" 25 Other obvious general language problems are

those of specialization, which de Grolier calls a

"second Tower of Babel, a confusion of tongues

within one and the same tongue," 26 of different

meanings attached to the same word ("plasma" in

the biological and physical sciences) , of the coinage of new terminology and the use of "technese."

These are problems that have been and are being

attacked by professional societies and institutes

, for many specialized fields. The requirements of

interdisciplinary areas and mission-oriented in-

. formation services, however, point up the needs

1 1 for centralized or coordinated sources of information about on-going projects in glossary construction and standardization of terminology as well as for the exchange of products.

In terms of looking forward to machine proci essing of full text (whether for mechanized

\ translation, automatic content analysis, or storage,

search, and retrieval purposes), additional types

;

I of "language" suggest themselves for standardiza-

;j tion or agreement as to preferred practice. These

i are the languages of equations, formulas, special

; symbols, diagrams, and other graphic material.

1 Tareev, for example, has emphasized requirej

i ments for terse, simple language, standardized

j I terminology, the use of generally accepted prac-

. tices with respect to units of measurements and

L

; methods for writing equations as being "especially

) j important in the application of machine language

a

j techniques." 27

||1 In this connection we note that at the UNESCO

a 1949 Conference on Abstracting and Indexing it was recommended that : "the metric system should

25 Reed, 1960 [475];, p. 165.

26 de Grolier, 1958 [169]|, p. 276. « Tareev, 1962, [555], p. 339.

be used for weights and measures and the centigrade system for recording temperatures in medical and biological communications" 28 and that

with respect to chemical ciphers and notations "a

proposed international standard notation system,

based upon the Dyson notation, has been . . . published by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry." 29 At another level of language, the difficulties are

those of standardizing or of coordinating the in- dexing or classification languages. As we have

seen, the SLA collection of subject heading lists

is an example of a cooperative effort aimed at maintaining information about the availability of language resources useful in the construction and

evaluation of new and revised schedules, indexing

vocabularies, and thesauri. The typical differ- ences of approach between documentalists and li- brarians, and between those advocating classifica- tion rather than coordinate indexing, however,

may have prevented more helpful efforts in this direction. For example, at the Rutgers seminar on

the UDC system, "Mrs. Brownson asked whether

the special language of the UDC and its structure represent a language resource which has not been

exploited in the development of the thesaurus as a method of displaying relations." 30 The 1962 comments of Markus are still appropriate. He said that there was ample opportunity

tor coordinated research aimed at producing more

and better published indexes at lower cost. One

approach would be to "explore the possibility of

standardizing the index format for various scientific fields, to facilitate inter-disciplinary use and

permit development of standard computer programs for processing indexes. This project would

include the improvement of subject heading lists and thesauri in each field." 31 "In 1950, Mortimer Taube at the conference on

bibliographic organization held at the University

of Chicago, presented a report on the 'Functional

Approach to bibliographic organization,' in which

he formulated, in his conclusion, the idea that

UNESCO could encourage the development and

standardization of various 'categories' used in specialized codes, particularly those likely to apply to

fields other than those for which they were originally intended." 32 Unesco has been and continues to be interested

in terminology. Early steps included the commissioning of Dr. J. E. Holmstrom to study the

availability of technical dictionaries. "A Bibliography of Interlingual Scientific and Technical

Dictionaries, second Edition, Paris, UNESCO,

1951 . . . covers 1014 dictionaries, grouped under

221 subject heads and indexed under 45 languages." 33

28 Brownson, 1952 [85], p. 38.

20 Marden and Roller, 1961 [370], p. 5.

80 Mills, 1964 [388], p. 101 (discussion).

81 Markus, 1962 [371], p. 21.

82 de Grolier, 1962 [170], p. 10.

33 Brownson, 1952 [85J. 99
"The standardization of terminology, involving

maximum precision in denning the concepts used

in different languages and a search for equivalent

terms in other languages is viewed by UNESCO

as an essential condition for progress in documentation and especially for the classification,

retrieval, and translation of scientific publications." 34 Cooperative efforts at agreeing upon indexing

terminology are of course noteworthy in major re- cent programs discussed elsewhere in this report,

such as the revision of the ASTIA Thesaurus and

the development of the EJC Thesarus for the use

of the engineering societies. The considerations of the Weinberg panel in- cluded the suggestion that the various Government

agencies assume responsibility for one or more

horizontal or mission-oriented systems and that

then the Government could support the technical

society which would be in charge of each of the

vertical or discipline-oriented systems such as a chemical system, biological system, or physics sys- tem. "Such a scheme could result in a reasonable

standardization of indexing, and abstracting; it would require that the discipline-oriented sys- tem be compatible with the mission-oriented

systems." 35 Nevertheless, there remain substantial difficulties. First is the question of whether the thesaurus

or classification system designed for broad subject

coverage can be used for specialized collections

and services. In establishing the terminology for

the Medical and Health Related Sciences Thesaurus it is reported that "effort was directed

toward compatibility with existing compilations . . ." but that "due to the diverse and detailed nature of the basic biological and medical

investigations currently supported by the Public

Health Service, no existing thesauri provided adequate coverage." 36 Similarly, with respect to

classification systems, "In practice the needs of the

organization concerned usually take precedence

over standardization, and it is said, to indicate

the most pessimistic view, that there are as many

UDGs as there are users of UDC." 37 The second difficulty to be noted is that of pres- ent widespread incompatibilities in previously

indexed or classified materials. An example re- ported by Shera in 1955 can undoubtedly be replicated today. ". . . Semantics lies at the base

of all classification, and the standardization of

terminology is a prerequisite to its success. The

need for such standardization is emphasized by the

results of two tabulations recently made by the

Graduate Library School [Chicago]. In the first the subject headings used in the card catalogs of

nine industrial relations libraries were analyzed

to determine the uniformity of subject entry

among the several cooperating institutions in34 Scientific Information Notes 3,1,1 (1961).

35 Weinberg, 1962 [636]. p. 6.

38 MoGee et al., 1963 [377], p. 347.

37 Mills, 1964 [388]. p. 47.

volved. Of a total of 938 headings, of which 218

(or 23 percent) showed significant alternative

forms, 57 percent were unique to one library, 17

percent were used by only two libraries, 9 percent

by but three institutions, and 7 percent by four;

only 10 percent were common to five or more li- braries. A similar dispersion was evident from

an analysis of the concepts appearing in the in- dices of three general textbooks in bacteriology in

which, from a total of 2,256 concepts, 66 percent were unique to one text, 23 percent were found in

only two, and only 11 percent were common to

all three." 38 Thus another major effort that shows promise is the systematic investigation of possibilities for con- verting one indexing language into another, as in

the Datatrol Studies (1962 [235], [236]; 1963

[155], [396]). The problems of language raise a number of specific questions of index language

compatibility and convertibility. The questions

of interchange of indexing languages, and specifically the Datatrol studies have previously been

considered in connection with systematization.

Here, however, we will reconsider them in the light

of problems and difficulties raised, especially the

implications for compatibility and convertibility.

The Committee on Scientific Information of the

Federal Council for Science and Technology in its status report on scientific and technical information in the Federal Government dated June 18,

1963 ( [196] ) states that the National Science

Foundation, in cooperation with AEC, DOD,

NASA, OTS, and others, is taking steps necessary

to assure that one overall index to report literature can come into being. The intention is not to re- place indexes already serving "the individual needs

of specific agencies and disciplines, but to supplement them with a broader and more generalized

j indexing system for interdisciplinary and interagency use, and for use by the U.S. scientific com- munity at large." 39 For the stored materials of information centers

to be compatible, Center B must be able to take the

physical storage media from Center A and retrieve

information therefrom without difficulty despite I the manner of indexing which Center A used in determining the locations of storage of the information on the media and in labeling it with suitable

selection criteria for retrieval. Obviously, if the same practices are used as to the designation off

author name, corporate source, report number and

subject identifiers and if these identifiers and selec- tion criteria are recorded within the same encoding,

recording, order, and format conventions in two or more centers, there should be compatibility of us- \ age between them. However, such situations are i rare indeed. Thus the questions arise as to whether, from formats to indexing languages, some

degree of convertibility can be achieved.

38 Shera. 1951 [523], pp. 84-85.

39 Federal Council for Science and Technology, 1963 [196],

p. 5.

100
The Datatrol Corporation has explored some of

' these questions with respect to the indexing lan-

' guages used by the major U.S. Government ini formation-disseminating agencies. As a part of

• these studies, Datatrol prepared a table of index

1 ing equivalents for the different indexing systems,

AEC and DDC, contending that with the use of

1 such a scheme, Center B could determine which of

t its indexing terms could be substituted for those

i of Center A, and vice versa. This action, of

) course, would make the terms of the respective dic- tionaries of each center "convertible," thereby

s circumventing many of the problems of incompat-

• i ibility. However, Datatrol's actual table shows

i only the AEC equivalents for the DDC vocabu1 lary, and does not show the DDC equivalents for

J AEC's vocabulary, which would be necessary both

J for a workable system and for other tables

s of equivalents. Furthermore, Datatrol's study was made on the entire first edition of the ASTIA

i Thesaurus, including its "obsolete" terms as

. Painter (1963 [445]) calls them, not on the terms

t in actual use, as her study does,

i The Datatrol reports affirm "that patterns of

,

j conversion exist such that the ultimate goal of a

i Dictionary of indexing equivalents can be ati tained." 40 Datatrol's statement with regard to the assignment of higher generic terms as a useful

, equivalent is interesting. Consider an instance

i where Center B had media from Center A, and

, that a specific term used by Center B was not avail-

! able in the vocabulary of Center A although the

latter did have a higher generic term which would

"logically" include Center B's term. Datatrol

claims that the assignment of such "a higher ge- neric term as a useful equivalent tends to be subI ject to nonrigorous criteria," but that realistic solutions can be attained by "knowledge of the

'system users' requirements " 41 The procedures detailed in Jaster's February

1963 report [296] give evidence of a desire to compile a dictionary showing multilateral equivalence

I among the indexing terms of the three agencies,

i The subsumption scheme is a tool to be used in

the compilation of such a dictionary. "Its purpose

is primarily to be a display or grouping device

i for convenient scanning of the vocabularies for

i equivalent terminology. Of course, it will also be

! useful in that the scheme itself points up many

| simple generic relationships, since the grouping

provides some degree of context." 42

l The Jaster 1963 report does not illustrate the

categorization of terms themselves into groups and

fields. It does show twenty fields and 221 groups

i as compared with the 19 fields and 292 groups of

i the first ASTIA Tesarus and the 26 fields and 170

i groups of the second edition. Such categorization

of terminology is surely "classification," but the

categorization has not proceeded far enough in her

40 Hammond and Rosenborg, 1962 [236], Abstract. " Ibid, p. 19.

42 Jaster, 1963 [296], p. ii.

report to be of immediate value to AEC, DDC, or NASA.

The December 1963 Datatrol report [153] continues the Jaster assumptions in that it strongly

advocates a common subsumption scheme. The

scheme would be a list of generic subject categories

subsuming the composite subject content of government research reports. At least two uses of the

list are envisioned. First, each agency would use

the list to categorize its reports independently of

the use of its own specific vocabulary for indexing.

Secondly, there would be a computerized application of the list for the correlation of indexing data

among the agencies, the most promising technique

for the correlation probably being the statistical association of indexing terms announced by Stiles

in 1961 ([545]).

The common subsumption scheme is envisioned

as providing about 20 major divisions that would

encompass the scope of the subject content of

the document collections of the operating agencies.

These major divisions would subsume, but not

necessarily be limited to, the subject categories of

the announcement publications and distribution

guides of the operating agencies." 43 These 20

major subdivisions would subsume from 150 to 200

partitions or groupings of information, and these

groupings would subsume 1,500 to 2,000 "clusters"

of information. Datatrol in its diagrammatic il- lustration of the subsumption scheme projects beyond the "bound" of the scheme to indicate that

the indexing vocabularies of the operating agencies

may number in the tens of thousands and the scientific concepts and/or indications of the subject content of the research reports may run as high as the millions.

The Datatrol studies indicate further that the

maintenance of such a scheme might be the re- sponsibility of a clearinghouse facility in coordination with the operating agencies. Datatrol

views the object of its considerations not as a scheme "in being" but rather "a convenient tool for correlation of indexing data of the several operating agencies. Both the indexing data and the

subsumption scheme are associated with research

reports—and are in machinable form convenient

for computer correlation. This approach can

therefore be as dynamic as the situation demands

whether it be for retrieval or for mechanically

organizing report announcement entries for publication." 44 One of the obvious questions that arises

is who or what agency is to determine that

"approach"?

Painter's summation of the Datatrol and of her

own studies is that they "point out a degree of

convertibility between ASTIA and AEC. A

large percent of the AEC documents could be re- trieved by converting the ASTIA descriptors, at

least in the three fields where comparison is most

valid." 45 Of course, she suggests that the origi43 Datatrol Corp., 1963 [155], p. 53.

44 Ibid., pp. 54-55.

45 Painter, 1963 [445], p. 79.

208-371—66 8 101
nal Datatrol report produced only a "theoretical" rate of equivalency,46 attempting "to show what

is possible ; whereas the duplicate indexing analyses [of Painter] check what actually occurs in

practice." 47 Hammond seems to have been coming to somewhat the same conclusion, even though

by a different route, in his statement that ". . . to give a true picture, any measure of convertibility

of terms must take into account their frequency

of use . . ." 48 Painter's conclusions do not support the Datatrol proposal for interagency equivalency dictionaries. She foresees that equivalency can be

categorized from both AEC and NASA to DDC

but not otherwise ; she sees also that the indexing

system with the smaller list of terms can be

adapted to the one having a larger list. But the

major objection to dictionaries of equivalencies is found in the results of her study on the consistency

of indexing. Without an improvement in consistency higher than 60 to 70 percent and with "an

equivalency of only 30 percent with the broadest

system, a table of equivalents is at present of little value in either a manual or a machine system." 49 She suggests as alternatives to the use of a table

of equivalents (1) the merging of all the terms

from the vocabularies of interest into one master

dictionary with definitions and cross-references

and (2) the establishment of a new hierarchical

subject scheme whose superstructure will embody

all of the vocabularies.50 Painter's alternatives to the 1962 proposal of

Datatrol for a table of equivalents, however, still leave unresolved the difficulties of establishing

and maintaining consistency, reliability and quality of indexing—a major problem area. There

are those who contend that the classifier or indexer

performs his functions too subjectively, that it

is practically impossible for him to attain unbiased

indexing, that automated techniques would indeed

operate consistently, if not objectively. For the

present, however, continued reliance is going to have to be placed upon the human indexer, and

thought should be given to increasing the consistency of his work.

"Subject analysis of documents will remain, at

least for the near future, an intellectual

operation." 51

4.1.3. Consistency, Reliability, and Relevancy in Indexing

A general problem area affecting the determination of system requirements, the evaluation of re- trieval effectiveness, the comparative evaluaton of

different systems, the use of prior human indexing

as a basis for automatic indexing or for search

renegotiation, and, especially, the possibilities for

convertibility from one indexing vocabulary to an- other is that of the consistency and reliability with

46 Ibid., p. 82. « Ibid, p. 94.

48 Hammond and Rosenborg, 1962 [236], p. 4.

48 Painter, 1963 [445], p. ix.

60 Ibid., p. 100.

61 Orr et al., 1964 [440], p. 1144.

which two different indexers would index the same

item or the same indexer would index the same

item at different times.

There is, in general, very little objective data

with respect to this critical factor. Jacoby and

Slamecka report (1962 [293]) experimentation on

indexing consistency with minimal conditions for

six indexers (three experienced and three beginners) in the indexing of 75 chemical patents by the

Uniterm system. The minimal conditions involved indexing without the use of existing tools,

communication, or post-indexing editing. The ex- perienced indexers attained more interindexer consistency with less internal variation than the beginners, but it was surprisingly low for both, aver- aging 12.6 percent for the beginners and 16.3 percent for the experienced. Each indexer tended

generally to be about 50 percent consistent with

himself when reindexing "equated" documents and

using a vocabulary of "general" (shared) terms. Slamecka and Jacoby report further (1963

[535]) on the effect over base-zero (minimal)

conditions of three types of tools as indexing aids on the consistency attained by individual indexers on randomly selected chemical patents. The tools

having significant improvement over base-zero

interindexer consistency were a classificatory device (Manual of Classification of the U.S. Patent

Office) and an alphabetical subject-authority list of terms (the Chemical Patents Coding Manual

of Documentation, Inc) . The Chemical Engineering Thesaurus of the AIChE failed to effect the

consistency of the indexers. Improvement in in- dexer reliability and quality of indexing are believed attainable by use of prescriptive indexing

aids containinng a minimal display of variable

semantic relationships among terms. Such aids

formalize the relationships among terms so as to enjoin consistency of their assignment by indexers.

The most striking difference occurring within the

use of each aid, and in comparison with each other,

is that between bounded or specified sections of the

patents and the unbounded sections. If a section

for indexing is clearly defined, fewer terms are used by the indexers, regardless of indexing aid,

and less variability is encountered in the number

of terms used per patent.

Slamecka further suggests, with regard to the use of aids in coordinate indexing, that "aids

which contain large numbers of variable, optionally employed references increase the range of

terms descriptive of a document, and hence, they

are unlikely to improve indexer reliability to any

considerable extent." 52 Painter, in her analysis of duplication and consistency of subject indexing involved in report

handling at OTS, (1963 [445]) made a study of

indexer consistency within DDC (at that time

ASTIA), AEC, OTS, and the NAL. Each

agency was asked to index a number of items

twice, with an interval of one to two months be62 Slamecka, 1963 [534], p. 227.

102
J tween times of indexing. Indexing the second

s time was without reference to that of the first. There was no attempt to have the same indexer

i process each report : the experiment was designed

1 to test the system and not the individual. The

i terms identical to each other in the two indexings

[ afforded a means for determining consistency.

There was about a 65 to 72 percent consistency on

j the average for the four systems.

Painter concludes that to raise the level of in-

, dexing consistency there are four possible

methods: (1) ensure adequate subject training of

the indexers before they index at all (without the

training, the act of indexing "becomes more guess

than knowledge, or else indexing from the title")

I (2) have indexers experienced in the art of indexI ing; (3) standardize the indexing code or rules

being followed; and (4) supervise the assignment

of indexing terms by the indexers, including the new terms being proposed.53 Although the purpose of Painter's analysis was

primarily to investigate the conversion of one

indexing vocabulary to another, her observations

concerning consistency itself are well taken. She

states of the type of equivalence tables suggested

by the Datatrol Studies (Hammond and Rosenborg, 1962 [235], [236]) that: "The value of

equivalency studies and most particularly the table

of equivalents presuppose the consistency of in- dexing. Convertibility between systems is thus

dependent on the consistency of indexing. Without consistency, the vocabularies as units are not

sound; equivalencies cannot be drawn or effec- tively used for convertibility." 54 She also points

out, as quoted earlier, that "with onlv 60 to 70

percent consistency of indexing within each sys- tem ... a table of equivalents is at present of lit- tle value in either a manual or a machine

system." 55 Belated to the problems of consistency and re- liability of indexing is the question of the rele- vancy of the indexing terms that are assigned

to the actual subject of the document. More generally, the question of relevancy, difficult though

it may be to measure or assess, is generally con- sidered to be crucial to the evaluation of an in- formation system. In particular, such measures

as the recall ratio, i.e., the number of relevant

documents retrieved as against the total number

of relevant documents known to be in the collec- tion, and the relevance ratio, i.e., the percentage of

relevant documents among the documents actually

retrieved, have been used as evaluation criteria in

the comparative testing of two or more systems.

In the matter of comparative evaluation, as in

the case of studies of consistency, there is as yet

relatively little experimental data with the exception of the ASLIB Cranfield Project (Cleverdon

et al., 1959 [123] ; 1960 [122] ; 1962 [124] ; 1963

"Painter, 1963 [445], p. 107-108.

54 Ibid, p. 109.

55 Ibid, p. ix.

[127] ; 1964 [125] [126] ) . Of the following four

representative experiments on the intercomparison

of indexing systems or methods, three were completed within the past 10 years and one is contemplated.

The first of these experiments was as between

ASTIA Reference Center personnel conducting

searches against a conventional subject catalog

and personnel of Documentation, Inc., making the same searches against a coordinate Uniterm Index

(Gull, 1956 [231] ; Warheit, 1956 [628] ) . Gull re- ports that a fairly thorough search of the litera- ture indicates that this comparison of two refer- ence systems is "the first undertaken so far . . ." 56 The desire was to learn how the Documentation,

Inc. and ASTIA groups would respond to a set of questions which each had processed, the first group by the use of Uniterms and the second group

by the use of regular subject headings. The results, however, were subject to question and criti- cism: "Unfortunately, the conditions of the test were very poorly designed so that, in the final analysis, each group was the sole judge both of the

scope of the original request and of the adequacy

of the bibliography produced. The resulting

claims are of course contradictory." 57 "It would appear that when the searches were

completed, each organization then looked at the

documents which had been retrieved and decided on those which were relevant to each particular

question. The two groups then met to compare

results. Immediately they came up against the

problem of deciding what was relevant and found

that they were quite unable to agree on this point.

Each group had its own interpretation of the

question and therefore its own views as to the

relevance of the documents. It appears that after some lengthy discussion, the decision was taken

that each group should compare the retrieved documents and make its own analysis. The report

prepared by Documentation, Inc., as discussed in

the paper by Gull, would appear to indicate that

the Uniterm system was more successful than the

alphabetical indexing of ASTIA. It also seems

that the ASTIA group, as a result of their analysis, were of the opinion that the position was the

reverse." 58 The second series of testing was reported by

Schuller of the Armed Services Technical Documentation and Information Centre (TDCK) of

the Netherlands Ministry of Defence at the 35th

annual conference of ASLIB in September 1960

([506]). TDCK was then using two different

systems for retrieval: the UDC and Uniterms.

"The application of two systems which differ fundamentally in their nature and philosophy will

always put us in command of the sum of the

possibilities inherent in the two systems." 59

56 Gull, 1956 [231]|, p. 329. "Warheit, 1956 [628], p. 274.

63 Cleverdon, 1962 [124], pp. 7-8.

59 Schuller, 1960 [506], p. 379.

103
In the first TDCK test 100 queries were put to the two systems. Although the Uniterm system

gave slightly better results, the UDC "procured

many valuable documents not found by the other

system, which fact will support TDCK in its conviction that the two systems should be used

together." In the second test 200 queries were

put to the systems for retrieval of specific reports,

known by title, from the center's collection of

ASTIA-processed documents. The recommendation resulting from these two tests is that a Uniterm system should be used for a collection of

technical reports with known titles, for the following reasons: (1) there was only about a 1 percent

chance that the report would not be discovered

against 18y2 percent by UDC; (2) the average

search lasted only iy2 minutes against 10 minutes

required by UDC; and (3) the librarian did "not

need the help of a technical information officer to recover a specific report." 60 The third experiment was one of a series of

comparative tests that have been conducted by

Cleverdon and his associates under a grant to ASLIB by the National Science Foundation be- ginning in 1957. The tests were undertaken at the

College of Aeronautics in Cranfield, England, and

consisted of the indexing of 18,000 documents by

the UDC, an alphabetical subject index, a special

facet classification, and the Uniterm system of

coordinate indexing. The first stage of the in- vestigation was concerned mainly with indexing

the documents and preparing the four indexes;

this stage was reported upon by Cleverdon in Sepember 1960 [122]. In the test program questions were at first directed to a collection of 6.000

documents. These "Cranfield I" tests established

the experimental recall ratio "by conducting

searches for questions which had been based on documents known to be in the collection, and the

result of this showed that, on an average, about 80

(percent) of the source documents were being

retrieved." 61 Further tests against the full cor- pus of 18,000 items again showed a recall ratio

ranging between 75 percent and 85 percent for all four indexing systems.62 The investigators themselves have characterized

the Cranfield I experiments as follows : "Its main

endeavor was that it tried to measure the operating

efficiency of complete indexing languages in a simulated real life situation, and also that it used, as its major measure of performance, a relatively

crude gauge of relevance based on the retrieval or nonretrieval of a single source document." 63 The

1962 Cranfield _ Report (Cleverdon [124]) also

emphasizes various reasons or failures to retrieve source documents. The findings have been subjected to some criticisms on these and other

grounds, including apparent indecisiveness with

respect to bases for choice among different systems.

60 Ibid, p. 386.

61 Cleverdon and Mills, 1963 [127], p. 6.

02 Cleverdon et al. 1964 [125], p. 87.

63 Cleverdon and Mills, 1963 [127], p. 12.

The answer given by Cleverdon as to which of

the systems should be recommended is that : "This

is impossible to answer without qualification, for no system which has been investigated has shown

itself to be so markedly superior as to justify its use in all conditions. The size of the collection,

the number of users, obviously the subject matter

these are the type of considerations which would

influence a decision." 64 Richmond, however, in a review of the Cranfield

work, remarks that the answer as given by Cleverdon "hardly satisfies the purpose of the experi- \ riient or does justice to its results." 65 Moreover, in the present state of the art of evaluation of information selection, storage, and retrieval systems, it may fairly be observed that: "The outstanding

large-scale and realistic experimental work is that

of Cleverdon," 66 and "many observors believe that

the Cranfield study constitutes the most important

work done in the field of cataloging in recent

times." 07 Cleverdon and Mills have proposed a second

series of tests called Cranfield II, which "will try

to measure the impact on recall and relevance of

particular indexing devices—the elements which

go to make up a complete index language; and

secondly, it will try to use decidedly more precise | measure of relevance." In the Cranfield II series,

1,500 documents in the subject area of high-speed

aerodynamics: "are being indexed with great 1 thoroughness but without reference to any partic- 1 ular scheme. For each report, all significant

terms appearing in title, summary and text are | given. . . ." 68 Cleverdon and Mills are using four

levels of description : an abstract, themes, concepts j and terms for this study.

4.1.4. Problems of User Acceptance and Human Factors

It should be recognized that the problems of

user requirements and user recognition and accep - tance are, at least today, strongly interdependent.

Several far-sighted and progressive systems have

failed or have been discontinued because of lack of

demonstrable, continuing usage value or because

of user indifference. "No index . . . [and no cur-

| rent-awareness announcement service or search I retrieval system] ... is useful unless it is used." 69

1 Further, "there is no virtue in any information

service unless people use it actively." 70 The exemplary case is that the ChemicalBiological Coordination Center. While the primary reason for failure was undoubtedly financial,

it is likely that financing might have been readily

attained had the CBCC's services been more

widely known and used. It is to be noted that al- though at least 60 scientists had served on subcom- j mittees of the CBCC, only about 30 letters j

« Cleverdon, 1962 [124], p. 92.

65 Richmond, 1963 [482], pp. 310-311. ^Koehen, 1963 [321], p. 12. •"Randall, 1962 [467], p. 381.

03 Cleverdon and Mills, 1963 [127], pp. 12-13.

69 U.S. Senate, 1961 [541], p. 5.3. TMKnox, 1962 [320], p. 27. 104
expressing regret were received at the time of the

aimouncement of termination. 71 At the 1958 Western Reserve Conference on the

possibilities of creating a "National Center for

the Coordination of Scientific and Technical In- formation," Bernier remarked : "There have been

at least three mechanized services available to

scientists in general. All these three services had

a deficiency of questions coming in to them. The

Chemical Biological Coordination Center in

Washington failed. The CBCC, the CNRS in

Paris, and the Gmelin Institute in Frankfort re- port very few questions coming in to them. The

reasons behind the failure of the CBCC and the

shortage of questions coming to these three centers should certainly be investigated carefully, I feel,

and explained before another general searching

service is attempted." 72 An earlier and revealing example is that re- ported by Warheit as follows: "In 1951 Irma

Wachtel adopted the Batten system to index the

nuclear properties of the isotopes . . . At the Argonne National Laboratory sets of these cards were placed in the chemistry and physics libraries. Nothing happened. We then started pushing

them and displaying them as if they were new

books and succeeding in getting one person to use them. After two years of effort that is the measure of our success in promoting this really useful

indexing file. However, when the Nuclear Data

Cards were issued by the National Research

Council and these were placed in the libraries, we

were immediately asked ... if they could have a

set of the cards . . . The end product was an oldfashioned fixed file of over 2000 cards." 73 Studying the problems of centralization for

documentation operations, the A. D. Little studyteam reports : "Existing systems have not been

used extensively, and our study shows that these

systems have had difficulty in justifying their existence in terms of their utilization." 74 More recently, Adkinson has reported as fol- lows : "For the systems listed in Nonconventional

Technical Information Systems in Current Use, 50

percent of those using punched card equipment

answer fewer than one query per day; of those

using computers, 50 percent handle fewer than

three queries per day." 75 In the specific case of

DuPont's Engineering Center, a 1962 statement

reports: "Now in its fourth year of operation,

EIC has an inventory of 10,000 accessions ... It

is handling 1,200 inquiries a year, which is less than the rate should be." 76 There are many plausible reasons for neglect by

users of new and improved services. One is a matter of inertia: "The most important step in

the dissemination of scientific information is that

of assuring easy access of this information to

71 Dougherty. 1963 [177], p. 14.

72 Shera et al.. 1958 [526]. pp. 204-205. "Warheit. 1956 [628], p. 270. « Arthur D. Little. Inc.. 1963 [344], p. 45. "Adkinson. 1964 [6]l p. 2.

78 Genereaux, 1962 [214], p. 43.

American scientists. Perhaps this should be the

simplest task of all ; in reality it becomes the most

difficult, not only because of logistics but because

it involves overcoming the inertia of the American

scientist and entering into competition for a portion of his time." 77 Further, "an outgoing, aggressive, use-oriented, service, in effect, asks the

individual to change, sometimes in a radical manner, the information acquisition and handling pat- tern which he has developed for himself over his

lifetime." 78 This problem is further aggravated by deficiencies of training of scientists and engineers to make

use of the traditional, much less the newer and

non-conventional, types of services. "The training of scientists to take advantage of the scientific literature of their own disciplines has been grossly

inadequate, leading to ineffectiveness and inefficiences that the nation can ill afford." 79 Thus,

"a continuing educational program is required to convince all of today's engineers that modern

documentation services can provide useful information that they are not likely to find themselves

or even attempt to look for." 50 Again, "there is a tremendous education problem still ahead of us in

terms of getting an engineer or scientist to recognize the existence of these resources and find ways

to fit them into his daily work habits." 81 It should also be recognized that the problems

of cooperation, compatibility, and convertibility

must extend to the whole complex of documentation operations in the handling and use of scientific and technical information. A five-minute, or a five-second, or even a five-millisecond response

time to a scientist's search query will not avail

much if, given the address-locators of possibly

pertinent documents he must wait a frustrating 30

minutes or more for others to move about hi the

stacks in search and physical selection of the desired hard copies (many of which are likely to be "not-on-the-shelves"), or even if he must trans- port his microcopy "direct" retrievals to one or a few readers located elsewhere in his building, complex of buildings, or geographical area, and then

there wait his turn in the queue of other clients. Sincere but often impractical gestures of collaboration and cooperation have been typically

bogged down by real differences of special-purpose

interest, inertia, undue reliance on presumed

customer acceptance of present products, and the

all too prevalant human reluctance to change.

"... In many instances there is opposition to cooperation, e.g., opposition based on fear that

privately worked out documentation practices and

forms will have to be abandoned in favor of a new,

coordinated documentation. This is a psychological problem." 82

77 U.S. House, 1959 [587], p. 8.

78 Knox. 1962 [320], p. 27.

79 Adkinson, 1962 [51, p. 50.

80 Genereaux. 1962 [214], p. 43.

81 U.S. House. 1963 [582], p. 144, statement of W. H. Carlson.

8:> Frank, 1959 [200], p. 502.

105
Probably far more serious from the standpoint

of ultimately improving the utilization of recorded

scientific and technical information is the fact that

many present and potential users lack awareness

of the availability of materials, services, information service products and guides to such products,

services, or materials. This lack of awareness was

strongly emphasized in the analysis of questionnaires addressed to research administrators in the

electronics industry with respect to their needs for

current, on-going project information.

In the first place, "only a minority of the re- spondents emphasized the need for information

prior to publication in their specific replies to the

items of the questionnaire." Secondly, "a number

of responses expressed quite general satisfaction

with existing facilities and services in marked

contrast to responses which were critical or which

recommended radical new solutions." Thirdly, "a

wide difference of opinion was noted with respect

to the estimated numbers of people in the responding organizations who need to be kept informed on

the status of current research . . . ranging from

one or a few to several thousand." Finally, and

most importantly, "similar disparities in recognition of the nature and urgency of the problem are perhaps implicit in a lack of awareness on the part

of at least some respondents of what services are

in fact now available. For example, one respondent complained that OTS facilities are not available to him since he is not now a Government

contractor whereas, of course, OTS services are

available to the general public." 83 Corroborative evidence from the literature on

the point of lack of awareness or lack of mechanisms for utilizing what is available may be further

exemplified by the following: "There are defects

in the existing information system, but there do

not appear to be any major faults in the system

as significant as the fact that so many who might

use the system more, hardly use it at all." 84 Similarly, in a case of international cooperative

enterprise, "O.E.E.C. entered this field a few years

ago by launching a document exchange scheme . .

Reports of work issued by Government agencies

should be exchanged between various national

documentation centres . . . and through them

made available to firms. This scheme has been

only partially successful. Very little was ex- changed which was not received by the countries

in any case, but when the situation was looked

into a little closer, it often appeared that the

material had not previously been easily available to industry because internal organization had not

developed to meet the practical needs of the

industrial user." 85 This problem is obviously related to that of

realistic determination of user needs. "The es- sential difficulty is that, though the user may

83 U.S. Senate, 1961 [5901, PP. 108-109.

81 Urquhart, 1952 [604], p. 234.

85 King, 1955 [316], p. 9.

106

well know what he wants from an information

service, he is in no position to know what he needs

from it, namely what variations in the system

would help most to further his work. Consequently, any action based on analysis of present

user habits is unlikely to produce impressive

results." 86 One of the further difficulties is that,

"unfortunately, the problem is too often vaguely

described as 'satisfying the user's need for information' without defining the need or appearing to recognize the extreme ranges of variation that can

exist both in the nature of the user and the nature

of the information." 87 The obvious further com- s plication is that "the real needs of scientists and

their conscious or expressed needs may be quite

different. 88 Human factors, especially those involving local or special-purpose needs, also affect the content,

order and format of bibliographic information that

might be exchanged between cooperating organizations. An example is given in a report of the

American Petroleum Insitute's Central Abstract- , ing Service. "Studies in one company of an I abstract-writing style that drops bibliographical

data to the end of the abstracts, to speed information transfer, had met with highly favorable

reader reaction. This led to adoption of an in- 1 termediate abstract-writing style that begins with

document titles but places the rest of the biblio- I graphical data after the text." 89 Such practices ; would obviously have a direct effect upon machine- [ usability of abstracts prepared in this form if they

are to be interpolated into files containing abstract

information in more conventional formats.

Similarly, while the informality of corporate

source entries at a Navy laboratory library—"We ! use nicknames (NOTS), abbreviations (lab., co., and est.) , and colloquialisms (BuShips) ," 90—may j be 'good public relations' for the local community, I they would create obvious difficulties for interfiling

or duplicate checking anywhere else.

_ In those areas of human factors involving questions of user acceptance of machine products, ! much basic fact-finding remains to be done. For

example, KWIC indexes and other indexes compiled or generated by computer are undoubtedly

serving genuine current-awareness needs and they | can be prepared promptly and cheaply. However,

they are marred by disadvantages of line length,

arbitrary truncations of words and excessively long

blocks of entries centered on some indexing words.

The limited-to-upper-case types of computer

printout typically offered afford disadvantages of

acceptability and probably of physical legibility

in terms of the quick scanning that is desirable.

Within the general problem areas, then, it mayJ be concluded that "Human factors and machine

factors constitute the two major operational con-j

^Bernal, 1959 [54], p. 79.

8T Hillier, 1962 [261], pp. 31-32.

88 Brownson, 1962 [84], p. 77.

89 Weil et al., 1961 [635], p. 58.

80 Carlson, 1952 [97], pp. 121-122.

I
i siderations that must be systematically examined,

i and which will lead to a host of research prob-

\ lems." 91 Before considering some of the specific

problems introduced by prospects of mechanizat tion, however, we shall first examine some of the

j special problems which have arisen in connection

( with changes in the nature of materials to be

i handled.

) 4.2. Special Problems Raised by Changes in the

Nature of the Materials to be Handled

Major changes in the nature of the materials to

1 be handled in scientific and technical information

3 systems raise special problems. These major

changes include the phenomenal growth in the

1 amount of the literature to be covered, the increased quantity and importance of foreign lant guage materials, the emergence of less conventional

forms of publication and communication as bears ers of forefront information, and the use of non- documentary forms, especially in the area of

[ photographic and sound recordings.

"To the documentalist, information resources

consist not only of the formally organized contents

i of libraries and archives—their books, journals,

. serials of all descriptions, reports, all the tradi-

! tional library materials, whether in original or reproduced form, but also of stored data in

5 hundreds of forms: reprint and abstract cardfiles; graphic charts, such as infrared spectra;

1 tabular records of experimental data; data stored

[ on IBM and edge-notched cards, on microfilm, on

recording tape, on electronic memory drums, et

j cetera." 92

, As an example of new and specialized types of

material for which bibliographic controls, anJ nouncement mechanisms and means for exchange

or loan are needed, the case of the technical film

I may be considered. "The technical film is becom1 ing of increasing importance in technical information dissemination." 93 These films may, for ex- ample, provide data on phenomena not detectable

| by the human eye and involving slow motion, time

lapse, or photography in invisible parts of the

j spectrum.

j "The Encyclopedia GinematografMca ... is a growing collection of research films initiated . . .

1 by Dr. Gotthard Wolf, of Gottingen, West Ger-

\ many. Operated on a supranational basis, the

' program involves the collection, classification, and

r publication of carefully selected research films

[ that present motion phenomena of scientific values

\m . . . . The encyclopedia now consists of 340

separate film units ..." 94

- Another example is "most interesting among

) new Library acquisitions will be the Psychiatric

Recording Library . . . recordings ... of spon81 Stanford Research Institute, 1963 [542], p. 9.

82 Adams, 1956 [3], p. 73.

83 U.S. Senate, I960 [592], p. 48.

84 Scientific Information Notes 2, No. 5, p. 8 (1960).

taneous group discussions among psychiatric

patients . . " 95 Further, "for biomedical information recorded

in audiovisual form, the National Audiovisual

Facility of the Communicable Disease Center of

the PHS should be developed to the point where it

is analogous to the National Library of Medicine

as a central resource for such records and a compiler of 'tools' for their retrieval." 96 Unusual materials in the sense of traditional

documentation may extend also, as in earlier days

at the U.S. Patent Office and the Army Ordnance

Corps Museum, to models, devices, and physical

samples. Thus, as a result of the post-World War

II foreign acquisitions program, "through OTS

and Army, American industry has been able to borrow for testing and examination, many fascinating and novel devices: a horizontal mercury

type chlorine cell, a miniature Diesel locomotive, a

portable mortising tool . . . ." 97 At an ASLIB Conference held in London on the

prospects for cooperative action in the field of

technical translation, the Chairman opened the

sessions with comments on the major problems of

the information specialist, first, that he must scan an enormous quantity and variety of materials,

and second, that much of what he must scan is written in various languages.

". . . Much of the output of information is to be found in technical periodicals and in the flood

of ad hoc reports which tumble forth in increasing

volume from Government departments and other

official agencies, here and abroad. The organization of the publication and issuance of all this

material is as nearly chaotic as any human activity

could be: we all know that for every significant

article in any field, published in the dozen or so periodicals in which it could be expected, there

are likely to be at least one or two equally significant articles in the remaining tens of thousands

of regular periodicals, to say nothing of the occasional and non-serial publications. This points to the information worker's first problem—the scan- ning of a vast and growing body of literature for

material relevant to the needs of those he

serves ... In doing so, he meets his second main

problem : only 40 percent are in English. The re- maining 60 percent are in a foreign language—or, rather, in many foreign languages." 98 Problems of coverage and scope in terms of

cooperative attempts to attack these problems in

the light of the phenomenal growth in the sheer

quantity of items to be considered are stressed

throughout the pertinent literature. Two further

observations may highlight these difficulties here.

Thus, "the UNESCO Scientific Abstracting Conference Report in 1949 accepted one-third as the

85 Army Medical Library News, 1, 3 (Nov. 1945).

88 "Communication Problems in Biomedical Research," 1963

[403], p. 16.

87 "Distribution," 1947 [175], p. 10.

83 L. V. Chilton, statement in "Technical Translation : Cooperative Action," 1960 [566], p. 129.

107
fraction of scientific papers published which are abstracted in some way," 99 and the situation has

improved only a little: "Some indication of how

far we are from the indexing coverage of the

world's literature may be obtained by noting that

in 1961, all of the major U.S. scientific abstracting

and indexing services combined . . . will cover only about 16,000 of the world's estimated 30,000

scientific and technical journals . . ." 100 One of the most dramatic changes in the nature

of the materials to be handled in systems for processing scientific and technical information has

been the emergence of the unpublished technical

report as the major vehicle for communicating

current research and development progress. The

flood of such reports has resulted in a number of

special problems and difficulties, ranging from the

inadequacies of conventional coverage to specific

questions of specific identification. The nature of

the first major problem, that of inadequate cover- age by libraries and the traditional abstracting

and indexing services, has been stressed in a study

by Herner and Herner. For example, "with the

exception of Nuclear Science Abstracts, the major

abstracting and indexing services in the United

States have tended to ignore the reports that lie outside well defined and easily identifiable

series . . ." 101 The reasons include small volume

publication, the relatively ephemeral nature of the

subject matter covered, and quality considerations.

A second major problem in the handling of the

report literature is the question of what in traditional systems is considered the "main entry" for

cataloging purposes. The decision that in many

cases the corporate source should logically consti- tute the main entry has complicated the already

controversial area of rules for descriptive cataloging. As we have seen, the earliest attempts to achieve interagency compatibility in the U.S.

Government had as a principal concern the question of proper recording of corporate authorship.

Writing in 1952 on the problems of identification

and control of the report literature, Warheit in- dicates that coverage desired at AEC ranged from

omission of all authors with recognition only of

the divisional director in a laboratory to listing

all authors, all who worked on the research program, "plus the total hierarchy who approved the

report and were generally responsible for the work

done." 102 The argument advanced by Taube (1950 [551])

.with respect to corporate author entries, that the

cataloger should not be required to go beyond the

information available to him from the item itself,

becomes all the more cogent when the human

cataloger is replaced by machine. The argument

will also extend to other entries—the dates of

births and deaths of authors, for example. True,

99 Visscher, 1954 [6171, P- 85.

100 Bourne. 1962 [72], p. 162.

JW Herner and Herner, 1959 [254], p. 192. See also p. 29ff. of this report.

103 Warheit, 1952 [627], p. 105.

the machine can apply rules consistently, but the

costs of compiling, maintaining, and updating the

necessary lookup lists, directories, biographic data

files and the like would add prohibitive extra expense.

Special problems are also raised with respect to the control of the report literature, especially in

terms of the prospects for mechanizations. Existing announcement bulletins such as TAB or USGRR often carry items which have no title, but

where the input to the bulletin-preparation is in

form suitable for machine-compilation of title in- dexes, suitable provision must be made for the supply of a pseudotitle which the machine program

can use. Another specific problem is that of identification

of reports by one or more numbering systems.

Warheit points out that "although potentially it is I one of the best and most convenient devices for

identifying reports, the report number in actuality

does have many drawbacks. To begin with, many

originators do not assign numbers to their documents and, with each recipient providing his own

distinctive number to these 'orphans,' there has

developed a veritable babel of identifying symbols

and notations." 103 Connor suggests that along with other specifications in government contracts there be "a brief

statement setting forth physical and bibliographic

requisites in the preparation and publication of

reports," including a reasonable scheme for numbering.104 Rubinoff of the Technical Operations

Committee, Information Retrieval Subcommittee,

of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) declares that the IEEE, among

other tasks, needs to agree on a "document I numbering system for all documents including

Standards." 105 Mahany, Creager, and Herner have reported to the National Science Foundation the results of

their study on functional symbols currently in use

in government reports (1962 [367]). The study

suggests "how widely agencies differ in their re- porting policies generally, as well as in the names I and symbols they apply to constituent parts of

their report systems." The semantic problem

that of names and symbols—is considered to be j "but one of a series of problems, some wider and more fundamental, in report production and control." Until resolved, the differences in reportage I among the agencies "must continue to bar the

standardization of report designators, unless simplified designators are designed with greatly cir- cumscribed functions." 106 The design of a standard Government or Department of Defense-wide I system of report designation would presuppose,

and its implementation require, extensive revision I of most agencies' reporting practices both in scope

and structure. Any system developed would de103 Warheit, 19552 [627], p. 106.

hm Connor. 1956 [1341, p. 155.

105 Rubinoff, 1963 [500], p. 3. 1M Mahany et al„ 1962 [367] , pp. 29-30.

108
fine a standard code of symbols serving to give

each report title a unique identity and yet relating

it to a report series and a report system and possibly providing other information. It would

probably require essentially complete change by all agencies using such report designators.

Unpublished conference or symposium papers,

as well as published proceedings of such meetings,

are among the newer, important forms of information sources. "Conference papers, conference

proceedings, and information about the confer- ences themselves represent a serious problem in

the technical information field. Papers presented

at a conference may contain the most up-to-date

information available on a subject, and as a conse- quence considerable effort is devoted to getting

copies of them. At the same time such papers are frequently difficult to locate." 107 Experience in

support of this opinion has been reported : "Over

two-thirds of the papers published in the reports

of ten conferences were not individually abstracted in the journals searched, and nearly half were

neither abstracted nor listed and indexed." 108 Suggestions have been made for lessening such

problems : "If all conferences adopted a brief di- rect title incorporating the subject of the

conference and left all the attributions of organizations, sponsorship, etc., to a subordinate portion of the title, the cataloguer's and the reader's

difficulties would be greatly reduced." 109 At the 1958 International Conference on Scientific Information Liebesny reported [342] on "Lost

Information; Unpublished Conference Papers."

Several years later Ruth Hooker (1962 [271]) re- ported that proceedings of conferences and symposia were becoming an increasingly important

source of information at the Library of the Naval

Research Laboratory, and she raised the question

as to whether material so published is adequately

covered in abstracting and indexing services.

Some of the government report announcement

bulletins attempt to cover this material. Thus, in

each issue Nuclear Science Abstracts announces its methods for (1) arrangement of abstracts and (2)

supplying indexes to the publication. Part of the

announcement regarding abstract arrangement

states, "In the case of comprehensive progress re- ports, or conference proceedings and symposia, an

abstract is provided both for the whole publication

and for each individual topic, sentence, or paper."

An example is the announcement of three volumes

of the Proceedings of the Seminar on the Physics

of Past and Intermediate Reactors, held in Vienna

Austria, August 3-11, 1961. Volume I is an- nounced as item 26503, followed by separate abstracts for items 26504 through 26534 on neutron

physics and integral experiments in that volume.

In 1963, NSA began a concerted effort to account for individual papers associated with a

particular conference not yet published in formal

proceedings. The conference is assigned a CONF —designation, and thereafter, all papers associated with this conference are so identified. The

identifying numbers appear in the abstract, and

also in the report number indexes, grouped to- gether. Availability of the individual papers is shown at this point. If proceedings are published

later, the availability of the proceedings as a whole

is shown and the individual papers are dropped.

STAR has a method generally comparable to that

of NSA for announcing the papers given at a meeting.

"Availability of Nuclear Science Conference

Literature (TID-19000) is a new service initiated

by DTIE [The Division of Technical Information

Extension of the Atomic Energy Commission] in

July of this year (1963) which should be a partial

solution to the problem. It will give information

about the availability of proceedings or individual

papers of conferences in which DTIE is interested

and in which other AEC installations have by

their queries indicated an interest . . . The availability information will include such items as fu- ture publication plans, negative publication plans

(much time can be wasted looking for proceedings

that will never be published), journal citations,

(proceedings are particularly hard to locate if published as part of a journal), and known intentions of anyone to translate." 110 On an international scale also, the question of

conference papers and proceedings is being

studied : "The International Federation for Documentation (FID) on 14 September 1959 signed a contract with UNESCO ... for the preparation

of a 'study on the content, influence, availability

and value of scientific conference papers and

proceedings'." 111 The Union of International Assocations, Brussels, Belgium, lias received a National Science Foundation grant "to compile and

publish a monthly bibliography of all proceedings

and reports resulting from international meetings,

congresses, conferences, and symposia." 112 From

another point of view, "ISO TC/46 is now studying a preliminary draft international recommendation on title pages, which includes a special

paragraph on symposia." 113 Finally we should note, in terms of the problems

implied by potential exchange, interfiling and

compatibility among information systems, the

question of the handling of "separates," both pre- prints and reprints. Brownson reports a recom- mendation of the Eoyal Society Conference

(1948 [498]) with respect to desired common

practice: "It is recommended that all separates

(reprints) be headed with a full reference (name,

number, volume, and date of the original journal)

and keep the original pagination . >5 114

107 Davis. 1963 [158], p. 237.

108 Hanson and Jones, 1961 [236], p. 145.

109 Jolley, 1963 [303], p. 60.

»° Davis, 1963 [153], p. 237.

1,1 Report by Poindron, published in two parts UNESCO Bull

Libs. XVI, 113-126 and 165-176 (1962) [459], [460])

112 Scientific Information Notes 3, 6, 11 (1961-2)

113 UNESCO Bull. Libs. XVI, 172 (1962).

114 Brownson, 1952 [85], p. 38.

109
Again, with respect to questions of descriptive

cataloging alone, for future compatibility in the

case of preprints, what date shall be used, that of

the preprint itself, if ascertainable, or that of subsequent publication ?

4.3. Special Problems Raised by the Prospects

for Mechanization

One of the principal reasons for increasing con- cern about cooperation, convertibility, _ and compatibility is precisely the potential impact of

machine processing capabilities. Mechanized capabilities for (a) processing bibliographic data for

multipurpose use, (b) preparing tools for current- awareness searching and dissemination, and (c)

providing techniques for storage, retrospective

search, and retrieval create new needs and provide

new opportunities.

First, machine use—and in particular, preparation of material for such machine use—are expensive operations. The advantages that machine

techniques offer (of speed, consistency, multiple

copy possibilities, storage economies, direct tie-in to various communication links, and rapid updating of files, catalogs, and indexes, and the like) can be best achieved, despite the costs, if there are many users. Similarly, many contributors may be

required. Cooperaton among users, among contributors, and between them and the processing

centers involves mutual agreement as to coverage,

format, division of effort, priorities, and proper

balancing of service in terms of the various

customer requirements.

Second, machine use requires material in machine-usable form. Once material (whether it is a catalog card or other form of descriptive cat- aloging information, a record of index entries, an

abstract, or even full text) is in machine-usable

form, it can be reused for many different purposes

and it can be replicated for use in other locations

and by other organizations. Thus exciting new

possibilities are opened up not only for the ex- change of records and other materials but for significant reduction in duplications of effort such as are involved in the cataloging and indexing in one agency of an item already cataloged and indexed

by others. However, realization of these potentialities depends upon compatibility, or at least convertibility, between systems with regard to such

varied factors as the physical characteristics of

recording media, the format of recordings, machine language and character sets used, the identification of contents of recorded information, the

special symbols or codes used, the citation or cata- loging practice, and many others. Third, machine use and communication system

links imply new organizational and service possibilities. For example, many different users may

tap in to a remotely located source of information

about literature, information, and data availability. Cooperating centers can maintain their individual responsibilities at their separate locations

with effective coordination at the national level. In practice, however, mechanization of systems

of documentation and information handling operations has to date been limited to relatively small,

specialized collections, such as systems for handling less than 25,000 internally generated technical reports for which no conventional means

for control had previously been attempted. There

are a few exceptions, such as the very large Minicard and IntelloFax installations in military and

intelligence agencies.

Studies made in recent years by Stanford Research Institute, Arthur D. Little, Inc., the

Library of Congress automation team, and a group

studying the possibilities of a cooperative library

system to be supported by local industries and

Harvey Mudd College provide a consensus as to the limited applications of machines to date and

as to the lack of compatibility both functionally

and with respect to equipment used, for example

(1) "No present machine is equal to the task of

storing the immense quantities of information

available. Even further from solution is the probblem of achieving rapid access to a specific small

fraction of a very large body of stored information." 115 (2) "Present automation techniques do not deal

adequately with raw text. At the outset only;

catalogs, inventory files, and indexes should be

considered for automation. . . . The economic and

technical feasibility of automatically retrieving

information directly from the text of documents

has not yet been established and is an extremely

complex subject. For this reason, there is likely to be greater emphasis for some years on the re- trieval of bibliographic information." 116 (3) "The investigation revealed that there is no standard method of handling information

storage or retrieval. Each organization tries to meet its own needs by its own methods. Just as there is no standard procedure for information re- trieval, so there is no standard equipment. All

systems studied share the problems created by the

tremendous amount being published and the time

required to prepare it for processing through auto- matic equipment. All lack adequate storage (unless a large computer is used) and all lack a rapid

printing process to handle the output . . . ." 117 For these reasons, there is as yet no discernible

"state of the art" with respect to cooperation, compatibility, and convertibility, even as between a few mechanized systems, much less between large

and small, mechanized and nonmechanized, con- ventional and nonconventional. Instead, what

can be discerned is a state of affairs, from which

two contradictory conclusions emerge. One is that while maximum cooperation and convertibil115 Stanford Research Institute, 1963 [542], p. 10. ""King, 1963 [318], p. 11. U7 "A Joint College-Industry Library With Automata," 1964

[302], pp. 13-14. 110
ity must be urgently encouraged, most efforts to achieve compatibility or standardization are pre- mature. The other is that, whether improved

cooperation and convertibility are or are not

achieved, greater compatibility is imperative now.

Still other, but related, reasons for concern, ex- pressed in the literature to date, include the

following : "The trend toward mechanization continues throughout major Federal agencies. This

trend makes possible, indeed it renders essential, efforts to assure reasonable compatibility between

the machine systems." 118 "The danger in the current situation is that

attention will be so strongly focused on automation that the primary problem of achieving compatibility in the scope and use of agency collections

will be neglected." 119 Writing about the problems of planning for

compatibility within a single large company, but

with cogent comments much more generally applicable, Anderson (1962 [29]) provides a detailed

and thought-provoking exhibit of discussion questions which should be investigated in the development of compatible systems, ranging from what

identification criteria are needed and whether different ones required can be merged into a single

system to the possible pitfalls of coding and fixed

fields for print-outs, conversions, sorting, and the

like. She stresses that : "It is important to remember that attractive but irreversible decisions may

beckon at every turn. . . . Such decisions should

be made with cautious deliberation where costly

operations, such as the analysis of documents by

subject specialists, are involved." 120 She con- cludes that "compatibility with the future should

not be sacrificed for compatibility with all parts

of the company." 121 Amajor reason for current concern is that mechanization of some sort is now in progress or is contemplated for the near future in many differ- ent organizations, with respect to quite different areas of machine application, and with respect to

collections ranging from quite small to the very

large. Decisions at a variety of levels in a variety

of places, and intending to accommodate, locally,

ja wide diversity of interests, needs and facilities can not only contribute to but escalate present in- compatibilities to a level of continuing chaos. This

is because of the sheer costs and time required to convert any existing records and items to machineusable form.

4.3.1. Machine Language and Bibliographic Information

Machine language compatibility tomorrow implies the requirement for considering such compatibility today in present systems as they are cur- rently used. Achieving compatibility in the routine steps to which mechanization has been principally applied to date should be easier from many

U8 Cahn, 1962 [94], p. 23.

119 Crawford Report, 1962 [465], p. 35.

120 Anderson, 1962 [29], p. 114.

121 Ibid.

standpoints than that which would be required

for those operations and processes so far still re- quiring human analysis and judgment. Why

cannot standards for the content and format of

catalog cards be applied? Why cannot standard

conventions for descriptive cataloging be developed and adopted? Why cannot standard methods for recording, preparing and reproducing

catalog cards be established as is being explored

for the Library of Congress by Buckland and as- sociates of Inforonics, Inc. (1964 [144] ) ? Prior efforts to achieve agreement on rules and

standards for descriptive cataloging are reviewed

elsewhere in this report, but it is probably important to emphasize again that while the pessimism

expressed by Wright in 1956 . . . "When the subject for this paper was suggested . . . my first reac- tion was to protest that a report on progress in

the revision of our catalog code would resemble

only a dissertation on the religion of Frederick the

Great or a monograph on snakes in Ireland—

collection of blank pages" 122—is probably not as

justified today, there is evidence that many very

real difficulties remain.

Permissive alternatives in cataloging practice,

which appear to be a major result of cooperative

attempts toward standardization agreements to

date, merely complicate the mechanization problem. For example, deliberately cooperative at- tempts to achieve greater compatibility often lead

to greater difficulties of compatibility and convertibility on the practical side. Thus, while "the

possible disadvantage of bilingualism (in a proposed single international Journal of Physics Abstracting) seemed a cheap and acceptable mutual

concession," 123 it is also clear that the "constant recommendation of alternatives may be a rational

procedure for securing agreement in an international meeting but in itself it weakens the precision, the economy, and the efficiency of the

catalogue." 124 From the standpoint of prospective mechanization, moreover, the problems are aggravated not

only with regard to substantive questions but with

respect to details of storage requirements, typography and character sets as well. (Parenthetically, the physical medium for storage of catalog

entries was a factor in early Anglo-American co- operative efforts when "by adopting centimetersized cards, American librarians gave evidence of

their hopes for international exchange of catalog

cards.") 125 Decisions on elements to be included in records

and files, the coding or notation systems adopted,

and the number of types of characters to be rec- orded will have a direct and obvious effect on pres- ent and future storage requirements. The implications of potential mechanization on the format

and content elements of bibliographic references

i=2 Wright, 1956 [655], p. 331. ^Boutry, 1959 [74], p. 504.

124 Jolley, 1963 [303], p. 61.

125 Ludington, 1954 [351], p. 194.

Ill
and citations are particularly evident in the areas of interfiling catalog card information for machine search, of producing machine-compiled cita- tion indexes, and of machine processing of full

text. Margaret Thompson (1963 [570]), describes a computer program that will take bibliographic re- ferences or citations, once they have been compiled, and process them automatically, arranging

the citations into a standard format so that the

parts are unambiguously identified. Nine items,

the basic elements of a descriptive catalog entry, are accommodated in her program: (1) author or

authors, including the designations "Jr." or "III ;"

(2) title of book or paper ; (3) title of journal; (4)

volume, (5) issue, and (6) page numbers; (7)

name of publisher, and (8) city; and (9) year of

publication. The program also can sort and match

the parts of the citations, thereby making possible the identification of similar citations and the

effecting of various rearrangements of items.

We note, however, that the citations must first be compiled and suitable designators for the ele- ments given. The difficulties here are at least two-fold: first, that the standardization of rules

has not yet been achieved, and second, that practices are not consistent even for humans and are therefore not yet amenable to direct processing.

Clapp remarks on the somewhat ironical situation

that ". . . While in the traditional systems the

identification of a document (known in library

parlance as descriptive cataloging) is considered

perhaps less difficult than content analysis (known

as subject cataloging), with the computer the re- verse is true." 126 With respect to machine compilation of citation

indexes, for example, Pauline Atherton points out

that: "Unless the references are assembled in a standard form, the data collected in separate cita- tion indexing operations can not be matched and

resorted by machine. A rigidly standard form for

machine manipulation is necessary to insure this

type of coordinated searching and sorting. To

date almost everyone developing citation indexes

has their own code and form." 127 What might be called "chaos in card catalogs"

is of course as serious in many manual systems as for those involving potential mechanization. For

example, in the 1944 survey of the Army Medical

Library, it was found that : "Two different systems

of filing have been used, one, a word-by-word sys- tem, and the other, a letter-by-letter system. As

a consequence identical entries may be filed in

two different places . . . "Even when an entry has been found in the card

catalog . . . the next problem is to find a call number or class mark on the card . . . The most

prominent notation on many cards is the accession

number, but that is of no use for this purpose.

Another number, the one in the upper left-hand

«« Clapp, 1963 [116], p. 7.

1:7 Atherton, 1962 [39], p. 4.

corner, has to be disregarded also, since it is an | indication of how many cards were typed for that ! particular item. Other figures in the same corner I may, however, be location symbols. In blue or

black pencil, or typed on the card, they may indi- 5 cate the pamphlet box where the item is filed. |

Sometimes that number is prefixed by a symbol

such as "P" or "Bx". . . the box number may have j

been printed at the end of the entry . . . Disserta- j tions are indicated by a star, prefixed to the first !

word of the title . . ." 128 and so on. Hopefully, j; the example is of academic interest only by now,!

but it serves to point up the very real difficulties of I

\ transcribing catalog cards.

On the other hand, ". . . computer people are j learning somewhat to their amazement (and the ! librarians' amusement) that, as one 'machine' man

put it recently, 'every mark, every space, every i

1 position, every word on a Library of Congress

catalog card means something.' " 129

. Under a grant from the Council on Library Eesources, Inforonics and the Library of Congress ; are studying possibilities for multi-purpose re- cording of bibliographic information in machineusable form. A press release sets forth the study

objectives, in part, as follows : "The firm . . . has

undertaken to demonstrate that bibliographic in- formation, when suitably punched into a perforated paper tape record by a tape-producing

typewriter, can be reproduced in any form, I whether complete or abridged, typewritten or

printed in any one of a variety of type faces, as may be required for the various records used in

library operations. The purpose of the demonstration is to lay the basis for seeking general

agreement among libraries and other users and

processors of bibliographic information as to the

standards of conversion of such information to machine-readable form in order to assure compatibility and interchangeability of the product

resulting from work performed at different

locations." 130 Supposing that such compatibility can be

achieved for the future, however, there remain the enormous burden and cost of integrating the new

products with the old. Here a number of special

problems and factors meet to emphasize the pres- ent seriousness of the impact of proposed mechanization. First, there is the prospect that

automation of the more routine aspects of cataloging and bibliographic work will proceed well in advance of the design of systems capable of; mechanized search and retrieval for the very large

collections. Second, there is the tremendous

problem of converting present catalog files and

related bibliographic information into machineusable form. Third, there is the question of

character sets required both for input and output.

126 MPtcalf et al., 1944 [380], p. 23-24.

129 Adkinson, 1964 [6], p. 5.

130 Council on Library Resources, 1964 [144], p. 1.

112
jj With respect to the first of these problems, the

, r team studying possibilities of automation in the

)r Library of Congress has concluded that "the rej. trieval of the intellectual content of books by autoI matic methods is not now feasible for large collecjj tions, but progress in that direction will be ade vanced by effective automation of cataloging and

indexing functions." 131 Their report stresses,

jj however, that "there must be compatibility bep tween the Library of Congress and other research

' libraries, particularly with respect to the kinds of

>{ equipment developed. There is some urgency with

respect to this compatibility since some efforts at

, e automating individual libraries are already undere way. The effort of establishing compatibility, or

u at least appropriate interfaces, is probably small

. compared to expected benefits." 132 The second major point is more general in that

it applies to all information that is required to be

,. in machine-readable form and this problem is

s therefore separately discussed. The question of

, the number of characters in catalog information,

[ however, has been investigated in enough detail to provide data of both present and future concern.

, First, with respect to the number of characters per

record, Sprenkle and Kilgour have made prelimih nary investigations of the average number of units

j (characters, punctuation marks, and spaces) in

J

1 main entries, titles, imprints, notes, collations,

' subject headings, and added entries of sample cata-

, log cards used in several biomedical libraries.

5 They found, for example, that the number of such

units used for personal author names varied from

I 10 to 37. In general, their results showed considerj able uniformity of the average number of charace ters used. They conclude: "The internal consistency of the results of this study strongly justifies this type of analysis for producing findings

' useful in estimating machine capacities required

. for catalogue cards." 133 The conclusions of the Library of Congress auto- mation study team 134 are that : "The conversion of

; catalog cards is an enormous task; the National

' Union Catalog, for example, contains about. 15

f million cards with an average of approximately

I 50 words per card. Running text can be keypunched and verified at roughly one cent per word.

At this rate the complete conversion of the Na-

; tional Union Catalog would cost about $7.5 million. However, the heavy mixture of numerals

i and the necessity for a certain amount of format-

[ ting, error correction, and quality control suggest

i that the one-cent-per-word figure may be somei what low." 135

4.3.2. Storage Requirements

Another special problem raised by present and

future prospects for the mechanization of docu131 Kins. 1963 [31S], p. 2.

1S2 Ibid., p. 18.

133 Sprenkle and Kilgour, 1963 [541], p. 205.

ls*King, 1963 [318], p. 9.

135 Ibid.

mentation operations is that of storage capacity

required. In September 1963, John Senders re- ported on three different calculations of information storage requirements for the contents of the

libraries of the world. He summarizes

"The total range of the various estimates is only

slightly more than one order of magnitude:

7.5 X 107 to 7.7 X 108

. At 105 words per book and

five letters per word, the number of letters to be

stored is between 3.8 X 1013 and 3.8 X 1014. At 50

characters per alphabet and with 50 alphabets,

there are 2,500 characters to be identified, or about

12 bits per character. The information storage measure of the "world's literature" then is between

4.6 X 1014 and 4.6 X 15 bits ; 2 X 1015 is conveniently

close to the mean . . . "The growth rate is estimated to be about 3.1 percent per year, doubling in 22 years. Thus, the

current addition rate is about 6.2 X1013 bits per

year, or 2 X 106 bits per second." 136 Even if mechanized records of library and in- formation center holdings are to be limited for some time to come merely to the contents of sec- ondary records, such as present-day card catalog

information, the storage and machine processing

problems remain enormous. The King Report

estimates, for example, that "the procurement of

hardware, software, and necessary file conversion

for automation of the central bibliographic operation of the Library of Congress would amount to about $30 million.'" 137 The situation of the combined departmental li- braries of the Federal Libraries is not dissimilar.

"As of June 1959, the holdings of the 212 refer- ence libraries reporting in the Brookings survey

totaled almost 14 million books, serial volumes,

and uncataloged pamphlets (to which should be

added some 5.6 million technical reports held by

107 of the libraries) ." 138 Presumptively this total would include a large proportion of overlap in

holdings, but how can the specific duplications

within a group of diversified collections of this

size possibly be determined without machine

processing ? Related to the general problems of machine stor- age requirements are the more specific questions of

fixed, specified, and variable record lengths al- lowed for records, fields, words, and other entries,

and questions of possible truncations or artificial transformations used to reduce the redundancy of

natural language words and texts. Patrick and Black give an example of special

machine considerations involving the need for further agreements on descriptive cataloging conventions and practices. ". . . If we held 2 full decimal dates in 6-bit BCD (binary coded decimal),

48 bits would be requii'ed to store the information

about the year of an author's birth and the year of

his death. By adopting a suitable convention (the

base year 1000) and an appropriate pair of defini136 Senders. 1963 [515), p. 1068.

137 King, 1963 [318], p. 2. TM8 Evans, 1963 [188], p. 3.

113
tions—the first field contains an increment such

that the year of birth is obtained by adding the

first field to the base year, and the second field contains age at death—we can reduce the number

of binary positions required from 48 to 17 . . . Whenever information is required on a printout ... it will be displayed as it now appears on a catalog card." 139 These authors suggest further that ". . . the li- brary community should be stimulated to debate,

in publication and open forum, the requirements

for the master catalog file. In particular, the com- munity should be encouraged to discuss, and eventually to agree on, the following: 'Resolved, the

present catalog card contains information deemed

unnecessary in an automated system for reasons of economy. These items are . . .' Some of the

topics to be discussed are the myriad type sizes,

fonts, and faces that have been used on catalog

cards." 140 Similarly, Wright suggested earlier: "We

should start with the question, 'Why do we need

the author's name V And when we have answered

that we should consider whether the answer implies the need for the full name and dates of birth

and death. If it does not we next should ask

what other reasons there are for including them.

Are these reasons sufficiently cogent to justify the

cost of securing and recording the information?" 141 The problems and costs of securing and recording such information raise the further questions of

the language and media of the documentary languages themselves ; the language and media of en- coding, inscription and storage of document sur- rogates and condensed representations used for

search, selection and retrieval, and the language

and media of reproduction, display or transmission. We shall next consider some illustrative

problems of input, internal machine language, and

character sets.

4.3.3. Problems of Input

First is the question of obtaining machineusable input to any mechanized system. Modern

machines are capable of working with letters of

the alphabet and numbers when they are expressed

as electrical signals or other physical states rep- resenting those alphabetical letters or numbers.

This physically encoded expression of the alphanumeric characters is called "machine language."

The machine languages require the automatic or manual transcription of the conventional alphanumeric symbols into a coded form which may

or may not be legible to the human eye. The

coded form may be a specific pattern of holes in one column of a punched card ; other forms of

coding may be utilized in punched tape, edgenotched cards, optical spots, or magnetic cards,

tape, or drums.

139 Patrick and Black, 1964 [450], p. 46.

140 Patrick and Black, 1964 [450], p. 48.

141 Wright, 1956 [655], p. 33.

To date, there are three principal ways to obtain or record information in machine language

form: (1) actual language or by-product recording at point of origin as in tape typewriters or

typesetting paper tape; (2) manual keyboard

operations; or (3) automatic character recognition, not yet developed to the point of feasibilty

for general purpose text reading. This machineusable text may be regarded as the representation

of the alphanumeric symbols constituting a message or messages in the machine languages directly

usable both in specific input-output devices and. media and in the internal memory and processing

units of computers and similar data processing

equipment. Material can be considered machine

usable whenever it may be processed directly by

machine without manual intervention, even though

it may be automatically converted from one machine language to another during processing.

The first method is exemplified by the Inforonics

studies previously mentioned, by new developments in computer-related automatic type-composing equipment such as GRACE in the MEDLARS

System, and by the availability of paper tapes

used to drive more conventional typesetting equipment, such as Monotype. Up to the present, however, the potential attraction of the availability of

machine-usable text in the form of Monotype tape

has been almost universally disappointed by the

lack of suitable conversion equipment to rerecord

the information given in a 30-column layout to 6-,

7-, or 8-channel tape usable by computer, or to punched cards or to magnetic tape. Another dis- tinct problem is that of detecting corrections that

have been made and handwritten indicia for

changes of type style, font, and the like. Some text is already available, whether obtained

by this method or by manual keystroking opera-;

tions with a tape typewriter or a keypunch fori punched cards. The National Science Foundation

announced in 1963 the awarding of a contract to! Thompson Ramo Wooldridge, for a feasibility

study of a "center for text in machine-usable

form," the center to collect and make available

machine-usable texts for documentation re- search.142 A report as of February 1964 (Mersel

and Smith [379] ) gives a total figure of approximately 50,000,000 words of text so available, butt

this includes a large proportion of nonscientific

text, such as newspaper and popular magazine

materials.

In terms, then, of material now available and the | fact that the new type-composing equipment developments can operate only on future materials,

not the present store, the principal method for; preparing machine-readable material remains that

of manual keyboard operation.

In this second method of preparing machine-!

usable input, the typist or keypunch operator,

transcribes indicated copy into a desired machine142 See Scientific Information Notes for October-November 1963,1

p. 1. 114
b- language form on punched cards, on punched pale per tape, or directly to magnetic tape. The uncler1- lying difficulties here are time, cost, and availa-

)r bility of skilled operators.

'd "Punched cards must be produced manually

i" from data in the source document and here lies the

7 first and major input problem. The fact that the

& card must be produced manually limits the speed

w of the system to the speed of the staff operating

3- the card punch equipment regardless of the fact

ly that cards can be read at the rate of 1000 to 2000

id

; per minute . . . The average key punch operator

ig works at a speed of 8000 strokes per hour . . . $ "Verification cuts the production speed exactly in

ie half and thus the net punched and verified card

>y production is 50 cards per hour per card-punch

;h machine." 143 Since a single card contains only the

i- number of symbols or words that can be accom- modated in the space of 72-80 characters, it is ob3 vious that preparation of even bibliographic cita-

> tions alone can be a slow and costly business.

J- As noted in section 3.6.5 of this report, the tape

S typewriter is one of the devices that has been sugs gested for cooperative interlinkage between the

> document centers and between the centers and

r> their customers at remote locations as in the "Reac-

)f tive Typewriter" Plan (Mooers, 1960 [393]).

'8 Tape typewriters are also claimed by Horty and

» Walsh to be more economical of key-stroking time,

d such that "Flexowriter operators can produce bei tween 1400 and 1800 lines per day of statutory

o text," whereas "key punch operators used in pros' vious experiments could punch approximately 100

H lines per hour of alphabetic materials, but could

)i| not maintain this rate for a sustained period of

time." 144 Bernstein (1962 [57]) and Bernstein and MeyerUhlenried (1963 [58]) have made surveys of

" keyboard devices suitable for recording biblio11 graphic data for documentation activities at A EURATOM. They conclude:

J "For recording bibliographical data card punch-

'M ing typewriters should be used if: the cards are

to directly fed into EDPM, the cards directly serve u as storage and retrieval medium on conventional

» punched card machines, the initial document has

H no more importance than a proof reading sheet,

f Tape punching typewriters under program conlC trol should be applied if: trained typists are

ie

| available, repeated duplication with putting as heading of filing criteria is wanted, an easy tape18 to-card-conversion is to be used. Tape punchmg

* typewriters without program control should be

h used if: the recording and correction process is

11 to be kept as simple as possible, repeated duplica-

^ tion without selection of filing criteria is wanted,

the less expensive recording equipment is to be

>

j used." 145 In any case, intermediate transcription and

i8 conversion operations may be required in addi143 Cornelius, 1962 [136], pp. 44-45. |M 144 Horty and Walsh, 1963 [ 273] , p. 259.

146 Bernstein and Meyer-Uhlenried, 1963 [58], pp. 75-76.

tion to the initial keystroking and verification.

A particular application may require a sequence

of keyboard-to-punched-tape, tape-to-card, and

card-to-magnetic-tape operations. Here also is a problem to be faced in the preparation of material

in machine-usable form: the question of availability and cost of suitable conversion equipment,

and whether it can handle, for example, 5-, 6-, 7-, and 8-channel tape produced by different varieties

of tape typewriters.

Similarly, in the Flexowriter preparation of the

texts of statutes at the Health Law Institute, University of Pittsburgh, the records themselves

might be of indefinite length, but "since the

punched paper tape is being prepared for con- version to cards before being placed on tape, each

flexowriter line corresponds to one punched card

and is limited to 75 of the 80 possible characters.

The last five spaces on each card are reserved for a machine code.'1

'' 146 This raises the general question of whether or not the machine-usable record or storage media is physically compatible with the machine processing

equipment available. The most obvious example

is that Remington-Rand punched cards, with 90

round hole columns which may or may not be

punched, cannot be read with equipment designed

for handling 80 rectangular hole columns on IBM

cards, and vice versa. The possibility for compatibility is nil. Convertibility might be achieved

if suitable conversion equipment were available

and if the economics of using such equipment were

better than those of interpreting the information

from one card set and rekeypunching it into the

other type of cards.

A more recent example, involving the general

question of intra-Government and Governmentto-non-Government cooperation and with regard

to the problems of machine compatibility is that

of the MEDLARS system. To facilitate use by

other centers and libraries of materials in the

MEDLARS files, it is planned to deposit copies

of the tape files in various decentralized locations

for easier access on a regional basis. Following

a presentation of this system (Taine, 1964 [552] )

R. T. Esterquest made the following remarks:

"But there are more problems to a decentralized

MEDLARS than meet the eye. In the first place,

MEDLARS in Bethesda is centered in a Honeywell 800 computer. The computers locally available to my library happen not to be Honeywell

machines and cannot read Honeywell's tape." 147 To which the speaker replied : ". . . Honeywell

is not alone among the computer manufacturers in

being incompatible with the other computers. In

fact, there is even a considerable degree of incompatibility between different computers from the same company. However, this is not a serious

obstacle to the effective distribution of duplicate

MEDLARS tapes to outside computer centers.

146 Horty and Walsh, 1963 [273], p. 259. "Taine, 1964 [552], p. 130.

115
The conversion of M-H 800 magnetic tapes to other tape formats is economically and technically

feasible at the present time." 148 A case in point is the Biomathematics Division

at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, which has the Honeywell tapes converted to its own UNIVAC System tapes, via an intermediate conversion to IBM

tapes, m order to incorporate MEDLARS material

into its own search files. But, as Esterquest further remarked, "even if Honeywell's tapes were to be converted, there is still noncompatibility at the

systems or operational level." 149 The possibilities for machine convertibility between systems have been little explored. The few

exceptions have mostly been limited to mechanical

transcriptions and transliterations, resortings

and reassemblies, often accomplished by slow and

cumbersome auxiliary equipment. For example,

although a UNIVAC tape version of 400,000 Avords

of Webster's 2d International Dictionary was

available to RCA researchers, it was not usable

with any of the computers to which they had access. Accordingly, it was necessary to reprocess the

hundreds of thousands of the original punched

cards to produce another magnetic tape acceptable to the 301. More important from the standpoint of future

compatibility and interchangeability of machineusable products, however, are those problems which

arise with respect to "format control, questions

with respect to the conventions to be used in keypunching, and problems of preediting." 150 These

problems in turn are closely related to the possibilities of standardization of codes and conventions for recording, keypunching, transliteration,

and transcription.

The variety of input characters where text

even if only text of authors' names, titles, and

other elements of the typical descriptive cataloging

record is involved—adds significantly to time and

cost of preparation. Thus manual editing, transliteration, encoding and simplification before in- put is typically required, in accordance with rules

and conventions such as for the spelling out of

chemical symbols or Greek letters and for consist- ent practice with respect to format indicators

and font change designators.

Nugent (1959 [431]) and Ray (1962 [471])

have pointed out some of the requirements and

some of the difficulties in providing a manual for

keypunching of natural language texts. Newman, Swanson and Knowlton provide (1960 [428]

)

an even more complicated notation-transliteration

scheme necessary for keypunching of patent dis- closures in which a wide variety of boldface, italic and special symbol inserts have been accounted for. Patrick and Black have recently suggested that

"in the following rather simple way, a catalog

card could be easily punched : start with a modechange character that set[s] the mode to bold-face

148 Ibid, p. 131.

149 Taine, 1964 [552], remarks of R. T. Esterquest.

150 Stevens, 1962 [543], p. 63-64.

alphabetic ; following this would come the author's I name; following the trailing punctuation would

be a mode-change character that specified the mode • as numeric ; the author's year of birth would fol- j f low ; whenever this line was complete, an end-of- j i the-line symbol would establish the format for the ' title line; and so on down the card, with the i changes of font, capitalization, intervening punc- I tuation, through the end of the recorded infor- : i mation. If the card were multilingual . . . a J J mode-change character would indicate this '! c fact. . . ." 1S1

[ Font designators available in one experimental

program for the "extraction of significant infor- t mation items to be used in the automatic produc- [ tion of secondary publications from a formatted, ! s punched tape manuscript" include signals for t changes from Roman to Greek alphabets, subscript t or superscript, italics, bold, sans serif.152 e We note, however, that the number and identity I \ of these mode-change characters must be estab- \ lished and their usage for a particular applica- 1 t tion must be defined. This requirement raises the . i next specific problem, that of character sets for ' i input, internal processing, and output. e

4.3.4. Character Sets for Machine Processing

The present disparity between the very large i l character sets which typically can appear on the j|

! printed page or even on the catalog card and the J

c size of the character sets available on typical type- I' writer, keypunch and console keyboards creates a I dilemma. Either much of the information con- r veyed by typestyle changes, boldface, superscripts |

s and subscripts, special symbols and the like must 9

be eliminated as part of the input process or it 'i may be preserved by spelling out, encoding, and !' the use of special clue symbols, sometimes amount- 1 ing to three or four for each "text" character. If !1

( the information is eliminated, then its restoration j

!| is generally not feasible, so that the output char- jtf acter set will usually be limited to not more than I 64 letters, numbers and symbols, printed in upper ; f case. Yet what is desired is "legibility to permit P the rapid scanning of the printed product [which] P is an important requirement that implies a capa- i

! bility for printing in a variety of type fonts and i sizes .... A variety of type styles, weights, and |j sizes are needed to meet the standards of Library j! publication." 153 The present alternative, however, pending the |;

1 development of automatic, multifont, page reading ij devices, is likely to increase the already stag- 1

gering costs of input data preparation severalfold. "Obviously, direct conversion of data by j machine scanning would be infinitely superior." 154 I Unfortunately, the third possible method of input j

1 of bibliographic and textual information mentioned earlier, that of the use of automatic char- j

1

151 Patrick and Black, 1964 [450], p. 41.

J52 Lundy, 1963 [361], p. 115. King, 1963 [318], p. 9.

161 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 38.

116
acter recognition techniques, is not yet feasible,

's In general, a summary appraisal of the state of

Id the character reading art made in 1961 is still

le applicable: "With character recognition equip1- ment, the printed or typed page would be inserted

f- jinto the reader, which would scan each line, conie verting each letter recognized into the appropriate

le i machine code language equivalent. Reader out-

> | put might be punched cards, punched tape, magf- netic tape, or directly to computer. Prototype

a page readers for good quality printed text in one

is or several different type fonts are already undergoing active development and testing. . . .

il "The feasibility of machine reading of good

:• quality printed, typed or, in some cases, even handprinted characters, has been successfully demon1, strated. However, there is little operational

r experience to date except with limited vocabularies

t of specially designed characters and questions of

equipment cost and confidence in performance

y have so far precluded general use of readers for

i- preparing texts in machine-usable form. In addi-

• tion, if the source material contains graphic

e

; material, equations, and formulas as well as text,

r it may be necessary to perform extensive manual

editing and masking out before input to a

reader." 155 More recent developments involving design proe posals and demonstrations of page-readers with

9 some multifont capability are still far below the

, character set size required for most scientific and

. technical literature. Shaw reports, for example:

i "To get an indication of the number of difficult

j

| alphabetical characters that may be used in a

j single scholarly book, I asked Mr. Theodore Bes-

[ terman to count the different pieces of type used in

[ his World Bibliography of Bibliographies. This

| he did, and as shown in the preface to the third

edition of this work, he used approximately 1950

' different pieces of monotype . . . There are a

! number of alphabets that are not included in Best- erman, as well as mathematical symbols, etc." 156 Even for the case of catalog cards only, the

, severe problems of machine-reading are those of

mixed-font, mixed-weight and size, mixed alphabets and formats, and varying conventions of

abbreviation, punctuation, and representation

; which have been adopted to differentiate the various types of selection, locator or reference clues

, in a manner that would be convenient for the hull man eye in scanning and filing. This is why it is

i only reasonable to conclude as of today that" . . .

i

; The automatic conversion of files, such as the National Union Catalog, which contain considerable

heterogeneous symbolism, is not likely in the near

future." 157 The question of how large input and output

character vocabularies should be is further illus- trative of the ramifications, in a specific problem

sense, of the general problem areas, including

JM Stevens, 1962 [543], pp. 61, 63.

153 Shaw, 1962 [518], p. 268.

157 King, 1963 [318], p. 20.

those of problem definition (especially, of "seeing

the problem and seeing it whole"), languages, and

user acceptance. Clapp has spoken to the problem of the so-called "upper-case limitation" as follows : "As long as Mr. Watson would only give

us a character font in capital letters there could

not be any great fervor to load. If I may say so, the whole picture of automation in libraries from

the thirties right down to the present date has

been controlled by that uppercase limitation." 158 Regardless of the size and contents of input and

output character sets, however, there are additonal

special problems of the internal character set which

will affect planning for sorting, ordering, filing,

and interfiling. "Even though we have not yet

agreed on a standard character set for our data

processing computers, each computer has a single

set built into it. This set is the 'natural' set of that

computer, and all other sets are defined in relation

to this built-in character set. The character set is extremely important in file definition since the

character set defines the order of a file once it is sorted." 159 An example involving computer maintenance of a thesaurus in the Public Health Service uses machine-generated line numbers for each dictionary line because "filing of terms cannot be done in a strictly alphabetical manner. For example,

X-RAY is filed under X, while D-GLUCITOL is filed under G." 160 The effect of the particular internal set in a particular computer on filing and ordering also

points up the importance of either exact compatibility in input material exchanged between organizations or the availability of carefully programmed conversion capabilities. For example, in

certain computers, sequences of information

recorded in punched paper tape must be interrupted at arbitrarily fixed intervals by a special symbol

such as the carriage return in order to prevent

shifting in input so that one or more bits are deleted or added to the original bit pattern. If in

the tapes received from another installation there

is any deviation in position or bit pattern of the

interrupt indicia, such shifting may occur in any

case. This will result in garbling of the encoded text. Thus, for example, a one-bit shift of the text of the

title: "Real-Time Data," with upper and lower

case as recorded in ASCII code might result in the

following message being actually read by the

machine: ")206 (SYNC) : 462 . . ." If and only

if such shifts were consistently made for all inputs

and a compensating shift made on output, could

such messages be used for file posting, file maintenance, or retrieval purposes.

4.3.5. Internal Processing and Programming Languages

Specific questions of internal processing language and programming language are interrelated

158 Clapp, 1964 [114], p. 54-55.

159 Patrick and Black, 1964 [450], p. 31.

leo McGee et al., 1963 [377], p. 348.

117
with those of internal character set, fixed versus

variable word length allowed in internal memory,

and compatibility, or interchangeability. For the

21 different information retrieval languages and

systems listed by Grems in 1961 ([227]), 11 different computers are used. Some use a binary

internal language, some a binary-coded decimal, some a full binary-coded-alphanumeric. Special

programming languages are used, for example, in

BASEBALL (an experimental question-answering system), for the ACSI-MATIC intelligence

processing system, and for linguistic data

processing programs at the System Development

Corporation.

A computer program to produce printed book

catalogs at Boeing Research Laboratories, for

another example, has the following features which

illustrates some of the problems of compatibility

(1) it is written in FAP language for an IBM

7094-1401 intsallation but because it uses only

three index registers, it can be "directly adapted

to IBM 7090 or 709 with only minor revision" ; (2)

it provides subject entries, conventional title entries and permuted title entries, but the latter are based on manually preselected key words and "a

nonprinting symbol entered on input copy causes

rotation of the title about the normal indexing

locus, the left margin, with no loss of context,

whatever its length" ; (3) input can be either from

the preferred form, Flexowriter tape, or from

standard punched cards; (4) "sorting is accomplished in a manner analogous to Library of Congress rules, as commas and dashes in subject headings are used as control characters to permit the

necessarily unique subject-title intermix." 161 "Program revision" however minor, "nonprinting

symbols," "control characters," "normal indexing

locus" are all clues to difficulties of interchangeability even with organizations having a closely

similar equipment configuration.

In general, with respect to computerized documentation operations little or none of the input,

intermediary, or output products are directly

usable in any other system whatsoever. Apparent

exceptions, such as the distribution through the

SHARE system of various KVVlC index preparation programs, require innumerable compromises

between what-is-desired and what-can-beobtained both cheaply and expeditiously. Even

for the case where the standard Luhn KWIC

format is only slightly modified, input copy is generally not interchangeable today.

Two additional examples of related problems

might be mentioned here. The first has to do with

the wide variations in length and contents of the

stop lists used to delete from indexing consideration the common and insignificant words in

KWIC and similar type machine-prepared

indexes. The length and contents of stop

lists used directly affect the number of pages compiled, and hence both the costs and the usability

161 Weinstein and Spry, 1963 [638], p. 233.

118

of the printed indexes produced. Changes in stop If lists over time in a single organization, which is I

quite common practice, will seriously impair the tf prospectives for cumulative indexes of this type. ;jl The second example also relates to computer | production of permuted entry indexes, but in this

j case subject indexes involving a classification I scheme. Mills says : "The wide use of the UDC

in published indexes and bibliographies as well as by journals and abstracting sendees makes conj sistency between these in the use of UDC desirable.

To assist this, some users have advocated the ex

tensive use of the colon device in place of special

(and even common) auxiliaries in order to facili- tate the routine production of permuted entries, i e.g., 669.295 : 669.018.5 . . . would be preferred j to 669.295.018.5 . . . There is no general agree- ment on this however." 162 For another example, Wofsey in his analysis of

four COBOL compilers for four different computers (1962 [651] ) found an average of more than j 21 variations which would necessitate changes iff a source program from one machine were pro- f cessed on another. These differences involved

compiler restrictions in one system but not the • other, options available in one and not the other,

failure to accommodate changes in COBOL specifications (1960 as versus 1961) and variations in i the equipment.

Further, at a seminar on the prospects for an

information retrieval programming language, the : chairman summarized the consensus as follows:

"The wide divergency of basic file layouts, indexing techniques, etc., make the development of a

'standard' IE, language impractical at this time.

Thus, the answer ... is to encourage the development of special-purpose LR languages to meet

individual needs, even though this complicates the

translation problems enormously . . . ." 163

5. Implications for Further Progress

Observations that may be made as a result of this

literature review are as follows: certainly in the

United States, cooperation has long been evident

among librarians since the establishment of the

American Library Association in 1876. Interna- j tional aspects of such cooperation are evidenced

by such widely separated events as the 1908 AngloAmerican rules for cataloging author and title entries and the 1961 International Conference on

Cataloging Principles, sponsored by the International Federation of Library Associations.

Cooperation is also evident among those active in the development of new and less conventional procedures and equipment, especially since World War

II. Examples of this interest may be seen in the

development of a standard for the descriptive cata- loging of government reports under the sponsorship of the present Committee on Scientific and

162 Mills, 1964 [388], p. 47.

103 Saramet, 1962 [503], p. 8.
Technical Information, in the NASA, AEC, and

DOD microfiche agreement and in the approval

>y the American Standards Association of an

American Standard Code for Information Inter- change (ASCII).

Most of these examples of cooperation are con- cerned either with physical aspects of the exchange

af information or with the identification and description of documents. Cooperation in the "tagging" of the subject content has not been so previlent. The COSATI standard, for example,

makes compatibility possible among several agencies in describing bibliographic items. The

achievement of compatibility among three Federal agencies (AEC, DDC, and NASA) for processing these reports has been difficult to attain, even the achievement of convertibility among the

[terms used for indexing content proving elusive

)f despite investigations such as the Datatrol studies

a- [which look toward a scheme of generic subject cateI gories that will subsume the composite subject conif tent of the research reports dealt with by these

> agencies.

J I Major deterring factors in this area of potential

i! (compatibility or convertibility appear to be those

t, of achieving consistency of human indexing and

! :of bridging the unfortunate gap which still ap-

] pears to exist between librarians and "information

scientists," between traditional libraries and infora mation centers dealing primarily with the report

f literature.

: While the original impetus for this review was

with respect to the implications that might be

i found regarding machine language compatibility,

, it appears that very little helpful precedent is

• J available. The history of both early and current

t activities point to a serious question of prematurity

!

j of compatibility efforts in this area, much less ef- forts directed toward standardization. It would

, appear that firm standards for report numbering

compatible with an identification system for the

journal literature, for descriptive cataloging em-

>

! bracing both the traditional and the more recent

i

i types of publication and disclosure, and for subject

cataloging and abstracting at least to the extent

I I of minimum classificatory schemes or indexing

f vocabularies, are all prerequisite to efforts in the

machine language area other than those of agreeing upon such detail matters as the common coding

of a minimum character set (ASCII)

"For the past ten or so years, we have been pre- occupied with the development of new techniques,

few, if any, of which have yet proven themselves

to the exclusion of others. Now, with small chance

of consensus as to the best approach for a single

situation, talk of compatibility emerges with standardization looming as its ultimate manifestation.

Premature standardization on a large scale to sys- tems which are not the best is entirely possible." 1 Y. S. Touloukain stated at Congressional hearing in 1963 that "one cannot be against standardi1 Anderson, 1962 [29]i, p. 116.

zation, the question is what it is that we want to standardize. . . . Industrial compatibility in nuts

and bolts and machine threads is one thing, and

compatibility of coding intellectual information

which may be in numerical form, pictorial form,

quite often in the form of opinion and judgment,

is another." 2 The problems and difficulties include, as we have

attempted to illustrate, those of defining requirements throughout the entire cycle of information

processing from generation of basic data to use of

recorded knowledge, those of language at many

levels, those of human consistency and human ac- ceptance. Problems raised by prospects of mechanization include: (1) the physical characteristics of storage and recording media, (2) layout

and format of storage and recording media, (3)

selectivity as to units-of-information to be handled

and items to be recorded, (4) layout and format

of identificatory indicia, (5) coding required and

conventions used for abbreviations, variant spellings, and transliterations, (6) code symbol vocabularies, (7) machine language variations, and (8)

programming language variations.

Each of these problems obviously has impact on

the underlying intellectual, organizational, and

systems problems, reaching back into traditional

library practice and conventional interlibrary co- operative activities. In the 1961 report on Senate

hearings with respect to the coordination of scientific information, continuing and intensified efforts were recommended in such areas as " ( 1

) Formulating a thesaurus of index titles for classifying re- search and development on a Government-wide

and national basis; (2) Developing standardization and compatibility of data processing systems,

at least for all Government agencies; (3) Correlating a central project registry with the indexes

maintained by different agencies, with information and data centers, with research documentation and with the NSF Register of Scientific and

Technical Personnel." 3 These objectives remain worthy long-range

goals, but there are many practical difficulties which must be faced. Thus, Wall in commenting

upon the implications raised by the above three

points suggests:

"Specifically, a thesaurus for government wide

application would seem to be useful as an interagency communication vocabulary standing for

concepts of interagency interest . . . but each

agency would need its own thesaurus, consistent

with the interagency one, to cover its own unique

terminology plus that of the interagency thesaurus

which may be of interest to the individual agency.

An interagency organization thesaurus such as this

for government-wide and national application is out of the question, I believe, until government and

non-government organizations involved have first created their own thesauri, thus creating a base

'U.S. House, 1963 [582], p. 191.

'U.S. Senate, 1961 [593], p. 4.

119
for common agreement and resolution of individual disagreements.

"Standardization of all government data processing systems might well turn out to be a will-ofthe-wisp—at least for a number of years. There

are such tremendous problems involved, especially

considering all the levels at which standardization

may be striven for. At what levels is standardization to be achieved and with what economic justification (bit structure, collating sequence, character sets, word length, programming language, rec- ord length, record format, media, etc., etc.) ? "Finally, as for 'correlation' of project data and

information, we can see the possibility of SIE (or

equivalent) and similar agency indexes being coor- dinated, but it seems to us that beyond that the

'implication balloons to a gargantuan task

namely, correlation with information centers' and

with 'research documentation. . . .' " 4 Under these circumstances, as Fussier said a decade or so ago, "the conditions for successful co- operation are both limited and important." 5 It should, of course, be noted that many of the

recommendations of the Crawford and Weinberg

panels, of Congressional committees and subcommittees, of the Science Information Advisory

Council, FASCI, COSATI, the DOD-wide documentation coordination program, the Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information and others which have been put into effect will have a continuing impact on increased co- operation, compatibility, and convertibility. The

COSATI task groups on technical vocabulary

compatibility, on conspicuity, on descriptive

cataloging standards, on a national inventory of

journal literature, on a single Government depository system and on research and development

in the information sciences all point in helpful

directions.

Nevertheless, a variety of questions and provocative suggestions are implied by the reports in

the literature of prior experience, failures and

shortcomings, the lack of extensive examples and

the recognition of new challenges and new opportunities. First and foremost of the implications is that: ". . . While the theoretical recognition of the advantages for co-operation can be

taken for granted, it is a much more difficult thing

to achieve real and helpful co-operation . ..." 6 Honest differences of opinion have existed and

continue to exist with regard to centralization

and decentralization, mission versus disciplinary

orientation, Governmental coordination and pri- vate initiative, prematurity or belatedness of

standardization, precoordination or postcoordination in indexing, down to details of physical characteristics of storage media and the like. For

example, Agard Evans has noted that despite an

international agreement for cooperative abstract-

(i

l\

1 !

:,,

i 1

4 Eugene Wall, private communication, March 30, 1965.

5 Fussier. 1953 [208], p. 222.

6 Readett, 1960 [472],, p. 155.

ing in building documentation, only nine of the 1; participating countries conformed to the agreed

upon standards, even in such details as physica

characteristics of products. He reports, for ex

ample, that in France "the abstracts are produce'

in the prescribed form but printed on thin papei

and not on cards." 7 Nevertheless, "if informa

tion systems are to succeed they must be uniforn

enough to serve the common needs of various cate gories of users yet flexible enough to contribut

to specialized needs." 8 Compliance with standards, or agreed-upor

( conventions of practice, is also difficult to achieve1;! For example, the Unesco recommendation, "Guide]

for the preparation and publication of Synopses'

has been "officially adopted by the Internationa

Council of Scientific Unions but seems to havi

had little publicity judging by its slowness t take effect." 9 As another example, Cady (1950 [92]) report on the survey of 40 general periodicals and MI

scientific journals with respect to their compliance J with "An American Standard Reference Data anc'J Arrangement of Periodicals, Z 39.1-1943", which was intended to prescribe a standard location irjjj journals for the date, volume issue, page numbers]

table of contents, authors and titles of pages. Foii the general publications, it appeared evident either

that the editors had never heard of the standard

or were ignoring it, and, while the technical

journals adhered in some cases, considerable im-ji

provement was indicated.

Provocative suggestions have been made with

respect to a variety of new and specialized types;

of clearinghouse, directory, and exchange services)

and for the extension of existing services. Guides

or directories to sources of information have been

advocated at least as early as the Royal Society!

Conference on Scientific Information in 1948.1(

fJ Directories of specialized information centers and

services for both the physical and biologically

sciences (National Science Foundation 1961)

[419]) and of the information resources of the' United States (Library of Congress, 1964 [339])

are examples of recent approaches to one aspect of

this problem. However, although "we have in-; formation about information centers in the United!

States ... we do not have adequate information

about centers in other countries that might wellj

provide service to us." 11 Closely related, as anticipating new services' for continuing systems design, systems evaluation,'

and systems improvement is Bourne's suggestion!'

for a "documentation census": "One approach!'

that would be very useful would be to establish af

permanent mechanism for obtaining current andji accurate information about the parameters of the! literature problem—that is, a continuing docu-j

7 Agard Evans. 1959 F8], p. 493.

8 H. H. Humphrev. "Findings bv Subcommittee Chairman," in ? U.S. Senate, 1961 [590], p. XVI.

9 Craig. 1964 [146],. pp. 4-14.

10 Urquhart, 1952 [604], p. 236. "Heumann, 1962 [258], p. 122.

120
iris

;tj mentation census that keeps a finger on the pulse

ica :>f the literature flow to note the volume, characes :er, and trends of the various mixes hi the

ced dow . . . ." 12

pa Another suggestion is for the provision of photoma copies for all items covered by a given abstracting

irnior indexing service, or for an entire broad field

ite of science. Wilkinson and Waldo ask : '"Couldn't

wh someone assume the responsibility to provide

photocopies of any article which has been abloilstracted in C.AJ .... What we really need is

Tela sort of clearing house to which we could send

idejorders for copies of any articles which have apes'jpeared in the chemical literature. The clearing

nal house would be able to provide copies immediately

jrefrom its own holdings or forward the order to a

to'source which they know can definitely provide it immediately." 13

, Taylor, writing in 1963 with respect to increased

cooperative action among Federal libraries, suggested that among the particularly timely joint

md I measures that might be undertaken would be the

iclilestablishment of a clearinghouse on bibliographiin.cal projects and a review of translation services:

rs,! "demand, cost, speed, method of reproduction, and

•or indexing." 14

lierf Also, with respect to technical translations, the

ird general suggestions find echo in a specific case of

ca! mechanization : "One of the noteworthy features

m- of the French system is the recent introduction of

a Selecto-Cordoimier mechanical selector, which

ith enables translations to be traced even from incomes plete data such as only the author's name, subject

esjof the article, title, or date of periodical from

Its which the article was taken." 15 In the area of translations, it has also been suggested that directories or records of holders of

copyright should be established, especially with re- spect to obtaining authorizations for translation to

'be made. Reed says, further : "I think we should

explore the possibility of more frequent recourse

lie to owners. ... It might be well worth while conljjsidering the establishment of some focal point at

of; which experience of owner approach could be aca

. cumulated and advice given." 16

ed A more general approach to the copyright

on J owner clearinghouse has been reported. "A grant

ell has been made by the Council on Library Resources for a feasibility study of a clearinghouse which

Jwould serve as an intermediary between owners of

, n copyrighted material and scientists and others

3I1 wishing to make one or more photocopies of it.

ch The study is being conducted by the Committee to

a Investigate Copyright Problems Affecting Com-

](j munication in Science and Education." 17

he J Another example of a specific suggestion or

question is whether a "Current Contents" project

"Bourne, 1962 [73]'. p. 162. *TMTm, « Wilkinson and Waldo, 1962 [646]i, p. 175. Note that VINITI

does provide such services, see p. 49 of this report.

14 Taylor, 1963 [565], p. 77. "Liebesny, 1960 [340], p. 150.

16 Reed, 1960 [475], p. 166.

17 Scientific Information Notes 5, 4, 12 (1963).

can be established for multisubject technical re- ports, especially consolidated progress reports of

major research laboratories?

The idea of a central clearinghouse for "field-of- interest" registers extends itself quite logically

into the idea of one or more relatively centralized

and specialized selective dissemination operations.

New machine possibilities for the production of

special-purpose and 'tailored' bibliographies on demand raise the further intriguing prospect of

demand specified in advance, of "profile bibliographies*' as a further extension and development

of selective dissemination.

It has recently been recommended, for example,

that pilot trials be conducted for "screening computer tapes of current references to bio-medioal

literature, such as those produced in the MED^

LARS program, to provide individual bio-medical

scientists with a current awareness service specially tailored to their interests, habits and

preferences." 18 Fundamental questions that are raised, however,

go to matters of bridging gaps between libraries

and report handling centers, of maintaining proper balance between requirements of large-scale or

centralized services and local needs, of developing

systems with sufficient flexibility and provision for

the incorporation of user feedback and usage data.

In the area of U.S. Government responsibilities,

for example, has enough attention been given to departmental and agency libraries—their policies,

procedures and problems ? The Brookings survey

suggests not : ". . . It is fair to say that, taken as a group, the libraries of executive departments

and agencies have received little concentrated at- tention either from government policy-making

officials or from students of government. No general policy regarding their functions has been

enunciated ; no standing body of administrators or

librarians is concerned with their problems; and

no current and comprehensive statistics have been

available on the magnitude of their holdings, the

cost of their operations, or the range of their

services." 19 What measures of compatibility can be assured

in planning or implementing improved and in- creased Government-wide services in terms of

accessibility and costs of suitable equipment for

the use of mechanized records, microforms, and

other products available only hi machine-usable

form? Priorities of access to centralized services? Compatibility or at least convertibility

of physical form and. medium, content, and format

of bibliographic control information with specialpurpose needs and local secondary handling costs ? The latter may include, for example, the human

costs involved in scanning indexes, abstracts, and

announcement bulletins which are too lengthy,

too cumbersome and which have poor readability

because of "upper-case limitation."

m "Communication Problems in Biomedical Research" 1963

[403], p. 21. "Orlans, 1963 [434], p. v.

121
In this connection, the specific question of the

availability of inexpensive microform readers also

arises. As Becker points out : "Little information on machines and other equipment was collected in

Dr. Evans' survey. In their questionnaire replies a few librarians did report the presence of microfilm reading machines and photoduplicating

equipment, but the data were too sketchy to permit

significant conclusions. Conspicuous by its absence

in their comments, however, is any widespread con- cern about equipment and the impact which au- tomation is apt to have on their libraries. If the

federal library system is to be strengthened this

certainly is one area that needs detailed attention

and helpful support." 20 Turning, then, to the more specific area of

present and future prospects for mechanization,

we find suggestions for the provision of basic tools

such as the National Union Catalog in "machinelanguage form, periodically updated and maintained," 21 for "a systematic program of training

and education in documentation [which] should

be developed by federal libraries to encourage the

automation of their activities, whenever practical," 22 and for the encouragement and support of

cooperative experimentation in mechanized

documentation.

Among the improved clearinghouse and ex- change services which might be set up for the mechanization area would be exchanges of indexing

and cataloging information tapes, exchanges of

computer programs for listings and selective as- semblages of such information, exchanges of programs for conversion of one machine language to another or to provide magnetic tape images of

punched paper tapes so that information in various

formats can be "unpacked" and reformatted by

computer, and exchanges of machine-usable texts, records, stop lists, word lists, dictionaries and

thesauri.

We note, however, in this last example, some

warnings of possible prematurity. For example,

in House hearings on research in mechanized translation the following exchange occurred: (The

Chairman) "Each group doing research in this

field builds its own dictionary. Why can't the

research work on dictionaries be exchanged?"

(Mr. Dostert.) "We should perhaps make a dis- tinction between 'word lists' and 'dictionaries.' There seems to be no complication in providing for

the reciprocal exchange of word lists developed

by the various groups. It seems to me also that some coordination and standardization could be

arrived at in regard to keypunching procedures

and format. However, if by 'dictionary' we mean

the lexical materials plus the codes for the analytical operations, this would seem less feasible, since

the codes are devised on the basis of the particular

20 Becker, 1963 [46], p 92.

21 Swanson, 1964 [549], p. 87.

22 Becker, 1963 [46], p. 92.

philosophy and techniques pursued by the several { groups." 23

i Similarly, King says: "It is too dangerous to' insist upon or freeze on a 'programming language']:

for lexical material, but some sort of clearinghouseJ

will soon be essential in view of the manpower ;

requirements." 24: Another aspect of possible prematurity with re- " spect to mechanized systems relates to the more I general question : Should a uniform system for &t-J least minimal subject content indication be based:

upon a universal classification system, facetted!*' classification schedules, alphabetized subject head-; [ ings, thesauri of descriptors, Uniterms with scope!

notes, "free indexing" (largely of words derived I from text) , or mechanical derivative indexing by | automatic extraction of keywords or words occur-} t ring with significant frequencies in a text? Ads

example of desirable research in this area might be \ the project in which "AEC . . . cooperated with

the National Science Foundation in the development of an experimental classification and coding! ii system for AEC documents. The ultimate purpose r is to develop a coding scheme which can be utilized; t by a small digital computer which would be eco-[ f nomically feasible for smaller libraries." 25 Further, is the code or notation scheme by which

the classification or indexing terms are recorded t sufficiently flexible for multipurpose use? It 1 should be remembered that the major criteria v for notation schemes are "usually judged to be n hospitality (the ability to incorporate new classes s in their correct, logical place . . .), simplicity (the d ease with which symbols convey position) and r brevity (a central element in simplicity) ." 2(5

r Here the problem of possible prematurity relates the evidence, on the one hand, of the serious lack: ip of consistency between human indexers, even whenj o they _ are using the same controlled indexing or t classificatory vocabulary, to that of the, at the 1 least, provocative results from automatic assign- [ ment indexing and automatic classification experi- p ments, on the other. Wiile in the latter case the i experimental data available to date have been

limited to very small test samples, to a very small

number of subject headings or indexing terms to be assigned and to quite carefully selected pseudocollections within highly specialized fields, within ( these limitations the results do suggest a level ol

indexing such that users, or indexers, would agree;! i as to the relevance of terms assigned by machine 1 about as frequently as they now agree with each]

other.27 This is at about the 50 percent level, oil

less, for routine mass-production indexing opera-)'

tions, although it may rise considerably higher fori a carefully trained, highly motivated staff as atj

1

23 U.S. House, 1960 [588], p. 107.

2* King 1964 [3191. p. 241.

25 U.S. Senate, 1960 [592], p. 37.

26 Mills, 1964 [388], p. 36.

27 For a review of some of these experiments see Schultz, 1964

[510], A state-of-the-art review of automatic indexing develop-) ments is also in process of publication as an NBS monograph.

122
Chemical Abstracts or among those participating

in the Cranfield experiments.

It is clear that any successful interchange of

compatible or convertible materials with respect

to subject cataloging or content analysis must be

dependent upon a very high level of intrasystem

consistency as is, of course, optimal use of the

individual systems. To date there is hardly a sys- tem that has approached the degree of consistency

which will provide such optimal use of its own

facilities or of the export of its products to other

systems. Further, as Painter points out (1963

[445] ) , convertibility between indexing systems is highly dependent upon a high degree of consistency within each system. Perhaps only by

! mechanized processes of indexing and classifica- tion can results be replicated and, hence, consistency achieved. This area, therefore, certainly

appears to be one in which future research should

be encouraged and supported.

"Research should be expanded as to how far

i individual systems—manual or mechanized—may

vary one from the other (as they do vary at present) while still offering reasonable opportunity

for compatibility." 28 Other research areas in which greater cooperation, coordination and encouragement would

appear indicated are those of systematic attack on

the bottleneck problems of input and of the development of remote consoles and other means for

man-machine interaction in the information

system. The first requires further research and

development in the field of automatic character

recognition, with emphasis on multifont pagereaders and other alphabets than the Roman.

As noted previously, the cost of converting the

present union catalog information of the Library

of Congress, assuming keystroking of the information for each entry, would be not less than $7,500,-

000, and in the case of Federal Departmental

Libraries the sheer costs of transcribing _ to punched cards merely the descriptive cataloguing

information for these holdings would exceed, at minimum, $10,000,000. Pending development in

character recognition, therefore, it has also been

suggested that the possibilities for machine processing of stenotyped copy should be further

explored.29 A somewhat similar question of adequate

character vocabularies also arises in the research area of man-machine interface.

"Machine methods of editing, spelling correction, type selection, page formatting, and line

justification have all been demonstarted. Stress must be placed on software techniques for editing

and page composition. Computer graphic composing equipments must be made capable of providing high quality, reproducible copy at rates of

several hundred characters per second with a large

repertory of symbols, characters, and type

sizes. . . . There should also be some means,

whether at the console or central processor, of

automatic format control and a means of auto- matic transliteration of words in digital storage

to the Roman alphabet, regardless of the source language alphabet." 30 The King report also emphasizes some of the

benefits to be gained by the development of

adequate user consoles as follows: "users' annotations of subject classification or assignment

of subject headings could be accepted as input at the console, subjected to further review and editing by a librarian and then incorporated, as desirable, in the system. Users could also comment on

the similarity or relatedness of specific papers,

reports, or books which they utilize." 31 "A capability for browsing by use of the console

should be of even greater significance. The opportunity to examine statistical data on the number of entries in a bibliography, the bibliography

itself, and then selected pages of particular items

which may include title pages, tables of content,

and indexes, all on a successive rapid response

basis and coupled with subject access to whatever

depth economics permits, will provide a far more

flexible intellectual interaction between the user and the collection than occurs in wandering

through the stacks as though one were shopping

in a supermarket." 32 A final further example of needed research is in

the area of programs and programming languages

for index compilation, linguistic data processing

and automatic content analysis. Is it feasible to develop a general purpose compiler to cover a

variety of output formatting requirements, including those for various automatic photocomposition

systems? Is it possible to develop a problemoriented interpretative language to do for information selection and retrieval what ALGOL and

COBOL offer other types of computer applications ? Can Federal support as well as encouragement be provided to those who are capable of

determining answers to these questions?

"The federal library community offers an ideal

setting for the establishment of a cooperative auto- mation program involving education, research,

and experimentation. No effective means exists

today for federal librarians to exchange and

evaluate their knowledge and experience of mechanization, or to pursue broad, government-wide

mechanization programs. . . . The value of co- operative experimentation in library automation

should be emphasized in order to minimize cost, avoid duplication, and ensure widespread dissemination of results." 33 However, notwithstanding the probable results of further research, the problems of the handling

of scientific and technical information are urgent

28 Cahn, 1962 [94], p. 27. M King, 1963 [318], p. 9; Patrick and Black,

p. 43. 1964 [450],

s° King, 1963 [318], p. 20.

3i Ibid., p. 11.

82 Ibid, p. 23. ^Becker, 1963 [46], p. 93.

123
today. While information handling of the scientific and technical literature was principally a matter of manual typing, scanning, labelling, re- cording, storing and searching, the questions of

compatability and convertibility arose only as a matter of avoidance of duplication of effort. Cooperation was and is still predominantly con- cerned with the sharing of information about holdings, availabilities, exchange of hard copy items

and records such as catalog cards. The efforts are collaborative actions of libraries and information

centers (as organizations) and of librarians and

documentalists (as individuals or as members of

professional groups).

With the introduction of machine techniques,

however, cooperation in the conventional sense ac- quires one or both of two prerequisites—those of

compatability and/or convertibility.

What, then, are some of the practical steps

which can be taken today, without unnecessary

prejudice to future developments with respect to the intellectual organization of subject content

analysis, automatic content analysis, machine

search and retrieval, man-machine interaction during search and selection processes, and interlocking communication networks ? First and foremost, as we have seen, is to work

for mutually acceptable conventions and standards

with respect to journal abbreviations, transliterations of proper names, ordering and coding of

corporate authors, form, order, and content of entries in biblographic citations.

From the point of view of potential mechanization and of interchange of programs for, and products, of machine compilations can agreement be

reached with respect to the number of characters

per line to be reserved for identifactory purposes

so as to minimize, on the one hand, "double lookups," and yet not to jeopardize contradictory re- quirements for multipurpose identifiers?

Will it be possible to arrive at a Governmentwide report numbering system? If so, can it be

such as to incorporate security classification information ? Can it include an error-detecting or er- ror-correcting digit ? At the very minimum, there

should be concern for machine transliteration possibilities from one coding, cataloging, or indexing

system into another.

More significantly, every effort should be made

to provide systems interface byproducts, such as minimum version catalog cards, including subject

cards, that will be adaptable to less sophisticated

equipment in smaller organizations and even to manual filing as suggested by Altman (1963 [12] ). The latter point raises certain further possibilities with respect to which an organization such as COSATI might provide leadership and initiative, at least for Government, by virtue of its influence

and position. The first is to encourage the use of

Federal procurement authority in such way as to promote greater compatibility in the equipment

produced by various manufacturers and to insist,

124

for example, not only for at least one input and j output facility for handling ASCII and for , punched card input and output capabilities as

well. Somewhat less obvious, but equally pertinent to I the elimination and reduction of barriers to

scientific communication, would involve promotion of policy leading to more favorable copyright j

| conditions, to push the "preparation, elaboration,

and revision of classification systems in neglected ' fields," 34 and to press for changes in editorial, page

makeup, and even typographical practice that will

make typed and printed text more amenable to reading and processing by machine. ' A responsible, far-seeing coordinating body

(even if its functions are advisory only) should, it p is suggested, direct attention to problems and possible solutions in the area of present barriers to

scientific communication.

Elimination or reduction of major barriers to

p more effective communication and use of scientific and technical information will first of all broaden ' ] the bases for cooperation as such. Second, such i elimination or reduction of the communication j barriers contributes directly to improved problem

definition, determination of requirements, system

design, and practical implementation. Finally,

without such reduction, compatibility and/or convertibility within and between isolated subsystems j cannot improve the overall situation and may in

fact make it worse.

We are especially indebted to those members of

the Ad Hoc Committee who have forwarded com- j l ments and criticisms, many of which have been if reflected in revisions to the earlier draft of this

ublication. In particular, we are indebted to i cott Adams, Deputy Director of the National |[] Library of Medicine, and Ann F. Painter, and I other reviewers not only for detailed and cogent n criticisms but also for access to private files or per- I sonal recollections.

The cooperation and assistance of Josephine 4 L. Walkowicz and her staff in checking the bibli- I ographic references and of Betty Anderson, Cath- | |i erine Bailey, Helen Grantham, Norma Lupowitz, j and Anna K. Smilow in the preparation and II proofreading of the manuscript are also gratefully I acknowledged. i

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