bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY AS THE BASIS OF A NATIONAL LIBRARY
Authors: FRANCIS FRANK
Published: January 2008

One of the advantages of Festschriften according to a recent correspondent in the Times Literary Supplement is that ‘they help us to find out what the middle‐aged are thinking’. This welcome ‘Festschrift number’ of the Journal of Documentation for Miss Barbara Kyle provides me at any rate with an opportunity to explore further the theme which I touched on in my Presidential Address to the Library Association at Harrogate and which has most recently been taken up in a long leading article in Nature entitled ‘The plight of library services in Britain’. This theme is the evident need at the present time, in this country, for the development of a national library service in which the responsibilities for different kinds of library activities can be properly allocated, and adequately financed. There can be no doubt that the need is deeply felt for strong, informed central direction or leadership. The lack of it has led to the proliferation of committees and groups all dabbling in the study of information and documentation problems, many of them duplicating work which is being done elsewhere. This wasteful proliferation has, however, the valuable result of bringing to a head the urgency of the need for action. I am sure that this strong central direction and leadership can only come from those engaged in the actual provision of a national library service.
EVALUATION OF DOCUMENT SEARCHING SYSTEMS AND PROCEDURES
Authors: BROWNSON HELEN L.
Published: January 2008

Interest in the objective testing and evaluation of document searching systems and procedures has grown steadily during the past decade. The reason for such interest is perhaps obvious: a great deal of attention has been, and is being, given to the development of new methods, including mechanized methods, for storing and searching characterizations of scientific and technical documents. To determine the effectiveness and utility of these new methods, particularly in comparison with the more conventional methods still in use, we need objective means of assessing their performance. Although some progress has been made, much remains to be done on the development of evaluation methods and criteria, a high priority area of study in the view of many individuals and organizations.
SOME BASIC COMMENTS ON RETRIEVAL TESTING
Authors: FAIRTHORNE ROBERT A.
Published: January 2008

To test is not to evaluate. Tests reveal to what extend a retrieval system performs in some specific way; what value is or should he put upon such performance is another matter altogether. Clearly one should test only such performance as is necessary to the aim of the system, because one cannot test everything. Thus we must first decide what is the aim of the system, then test to find how well it achieves this aim. These matters can be examined and discussed usefully without going into profound matters such as man's place in the universe, the nature of unrecorded knowledge, the library's place in next year's budget, or whether some individual user's knowledge is changed to his individual satisfaction.
BARBARA KYLE AND THE CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIOLOGY
Authors: RANGANATHAN S.R.
Published: January 2008

Barbara Kyle is a respected member of the library profession. It is sad to know that she has resigned her place in Aslib work. She is too young and too able to be lost to library science. We look forward to seeing her health restored and her work resumed. Our first meeting was in 1948, in Chatham House. The huge work of newspaper clippings being done there impressed me as a first‐class piece of documentation work in the field of social sciences. Our next meeting was at Geneva in 1955 at a meeting of the Committee on the International Organization of Documentation Work in Social Sciences. There her dynamism could be seen in its fullness. In May 1957, she presided over my talk on Classification as a Discipline at the Dorking Conference. These were all formal occasions. We had a more intimate talk later, when we happened to ride by chance on the same bus down New Oxford Street in London.
PROBLEMS IN ANALYSIS AND TERMINOLOGY FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
Authors: FARRADANE J. , POULTON R.K. , DATTA MRS S.
Published: January 2008

For the storage of information for subsequent retrieval of desired items, two stages of analysis are essential. The first is the determination of the subject content of a given article or paper; the second is the selection of certain words, groups of words, or classification headings by which the subject content is to be represented, either directly or by a suitable coding. Some workers still look forward to the day when it will be possible for the whole of a text to be read and ‘understood’ automatically by a machine; the ‘understanding’ process has been envisaged either as a process of selection of terms by the measure of word frequency, or word‐pair frequency (adjacent terms or terms not too far separated in one sentence) in the text, or by some process of automatic linguistic analysis. Such methods appear unsuitable for several reasons: language, as normally used, is a very difficult medium for exact expression (hence the value of mathematics) and few authors write well enough to avoid all ambiguities; a human reader accustomed to the subject can easily overcome any difficulties due to poor grammar, badly expressed arguments, excess brevity or prolixity in writing and even, sometimes, actual errors; a machine can not do so. Furthermore, the content of a paper is rarely of uniform importance throughout, and it is not worth recording, for subsequent retrieval, details which are merely repetitions of matters described earlier and better elsewhere, and not essential to the main purpose of the paper; for example, in a paper on evaporator design, a description of a standard method of analysis, applied to the contents of the evaporator in determining the efficiency of the design, will not be worth indexing; in a search for analytical methods, retrieval of such a paper would hardly be considered pertinent. A human reader, though far from infallible, can usefully make such judgments.
SOME ASPECTS OF DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUING IN INTERNATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Authors: WHITROW MAGDA
Published: January 2008

The first volume of the Isis cumulative bibliography, based on the critical bibliographies published annually in Isis, will be a kind of biobibliography. It will contain all entries relating to men of science or to personalities of interest to the historian of science that have appeared in the annual critical bibliographies, forming a personal name index. The names will be in alphabetical order.
THE LEICESTER UNIVERSITY BOOKSHOP
Authors: SYKES L.C.
Published: January 2008

The University of Leicester was the first among the universities of the United Kingdom to establish a bookshop under its sole ownership. This paper deals with the circumstances in which the bookshop was set up in 1958, the role of its Management Committee, the services it offers, its success as a trading venture, and its prospects for further development.
INFORMATION RETRIEVAL—THE ECONOMIC ASPECT
Authors: BATTEN W.E.
Published: January 2008

The objectives and methods of an information retrieval system determine its input and output costs and the relation between them. The present trend seems to be towards increased sophistication (and cost) of input. ‘Retrieval efficiency’ can be measured, but the true ‘worth’ of a system depends not only on retrieval cost, but also on the value to the user of what is retrieved. Future changes—with computers being used more, and perhaps accepting ‘syntax’ as well as ‘vocabulary’—will substantially change the economic picture.
THE LITERATURE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND PROVISION FOR RESEARCH IN THEM
Authors: GUTTSMAN W.L.
Published: January 2008

Much research in the social sciences uses literature as its raw material. Older, non‐periodical material and long runs of periodicals are important; this is confirmed by citation analysis, which also indicates considerable use of a limited number of references, few of them in languages other than English. Problems and topics in the social sciences are less clearly defined than in the natural sciences; this and the fact that much ‘fringe’ material is necessary for social science research makes comprehensive literature provision almost impossible, and cuts down the efficacy of bibliographies and abstracts. The suggestion for a national library for the social sciences is discussed; the differences in use of and demand for the literature between the natural and social sciences are pointed out and the case put forward for basing expansion on existing institutions, with improved provision in the libraries of individual universities, where much of the research is based.
A NATIONAL SURVEY OF STAFF EMPLOYED ON SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION WORK
Authors: EDWARDS A.P.J.
Published: January 2008

An account is given of a national survey of staff employed on scientific and technical information work, carried out in the UK in the summer of 1965 by the Office for Scientific and Technical Information. Its prime purpose was to try to obtain some measure of the numbers of such staff and their educational background (including information work), in order to estimate future demand, and the educational requirements needed to ensure that information staff are adequately trained. Appendices set out the data obtained.
R. S. HUTTON
Authors: Patrick L.G.
Published: January 2008

Professor R.S. Hutton, D.SC. (MANC.), M.A. (CANTAB.) is honoured by Aslib as one of its founders and for outstanding service to it over more than four decades. Aslib pays tribute to one who has served it more than well in countless ways and, with foresight and wisdom, provided that quality of leadership which has done so much to ensure its development along sound lines.
PUBLIC LIBRARIES
Authors: HAUGH W.S.
Published: January 2008

It seems likely that a further substantial expansion of training facilities for librarians will be necessary. The new salary structure proposed by the National Joint Council for Local Authorities Services which ranks librarianship as a ‘second rate’ profession is likely to affect adversely recruitment to the library profession. As a long‐term policy to correct this situation it is suggested that the senior practitioners in librarianship of the future should be measured not by the ‘internal’ standards of the Library Association but by the ‘external’ standards of the universities. The author favours for future senior staff the integrated degree course on the style of that now provided by the University of Strathclyde supplemented by integrated courses in some of the existing non‐graduate schools of librarianship leading to Council for National Academic Awards degrees. The two‐year non‐graduate courses which will continue to train the bulk of staff for junior professional posts should also be ‘integrated’ courses; the Library Association should withdraw from examining, but should retain control of the Register, insisting on a much longer ‘probationary’ period between the passing of the examination and admission to the Register.
UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
Authors: RICHNELL D.T.
Published: January 2008

The qualifications needed for senior posts in academic libraries are 1. academic subject knowledge, to first degree level, but increasingly to higher degree level; 2. administrative and executive ability and experience; 3. knowledge of languages; 4. professional qualification in library techniques and bibliography. It is impossible to recruit staff with all these qualifications, particularly if higher degrees are required. Full‐time library education following first degree will continue to be a normal route for entry to work in academic libraries, but this must be supplemented for those with higher degrees and mature entrants to the profession. The training of professional library staff must not be regarded as a once‐for‐all matter, but as a process continuing through life. Present facilities for part‐time study are unsatisfactory. There is a need for the systematic organization of courses for those already in employment. These should be short, intensive, full‐time courses, of the summer‐school type, each dealing with one subject. Some such courses are now being organized, but they are not systematized and lead to no qualification. A programme of such courses, run by universities, library schools, libraries, and library organizations could be promoted by the Library Association and recognized for formal qualification. These courses would also provide for the need of practising librarians for ‘refresher’ courses and training in new aspects of librarianship.
THE GROUPED CO‐ORDINATE INDEX
Authors: PERRY PETER
Published: January 2008

A technique is presented for increasing retrieval speed and system capacity of co‐ordinate indexes. The method involves the storage of documents and document records in subject groups, as opposed to the usual accession number order.
NLL AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Authors: URQUHART D.J.
Published: January 2008

The NLL will soon start a service for social science serials but not books. The reasons for this decision are reviewed.
THE QUANTITATIVE EVALUATION OF REGIONAL UNION CATALOGUES
Authors: BUCKLAND M.K.
Published: January 2008

A comparison is made between systems of several union catalogues and of a single union catalogue in terms of costs and performance, with frequent reference to the British system. Multiple union catalogue systems are shown to be necessarily slower and more expensive.
SOME APPLICATIONS OF MECHANIZATION IN A LARGE SPECIAL LIBRARY
Authors: AYRES F.H. , CAYLESS C.F. , GERMAN JANICE A.
Published: January 2008

The loans control system used at AWRE is described in detail. Punched cards produced in the library are used as input to a computer to provide the necessary control tools: reminders, borrower, and date listings. Details are given of a method of using the computer to perform a sort in UDC number order. Plans to integrate and mechanize the cataloguing and ordering operations using an IBM 870 system and an IBM 360/30 computer are also described.
A NOTE ON THE NUMBER OF PUNCHING ERRORS IN A CO‐ORDINATE INDEXING SYSTEM
Authors: BLAGDEN J.F.
Published: January 2008

At the time of investigating the amount of noise in a peek‐a‐boo co‐ordinate indexing system, I produced some peripheral data concerning punching errors and would like to comment on the figure of 27 per cent which was quoted in the published results. This figure, however, was only a percentage of total noise and the actual percentage of punching errors was 089 per cent which was calculated on the basis that sixty‐six erroneously punched documents were retrieved out of a total retrieval figure in one hundred searches of 1,781 documents. Now this 089 per cent figure does not mean that in the punching of every hundred documents there was only approximately one error, what it does mean is that in one hundred searches only about one error per hundred retrieved documents was revealed.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CONTROL OF LINGUISTIC SCHOLARSHIP
Authors: THOMPSON LAWRENCE S.
Published: January 2008

This article is a survey of the broad field of bibliographical control of linguistic scholarship in the Indo‐European languages, although some titles described here are also pertinent for non‐Indo‐European languages. Improvement of bibliographies in this field as well as desiderata are noted. Special attention is given to the characteristics of existing or needed bibliographies which will permit computerization; but the need for scholarly insight in planning and supervising the compilation of bibliographies is also emphasized. Major works such as the Linguistic Bibliography and the MLA International Bibliography are reviewed in some detail; and the linguistic bibliographies of individual Indo‐European languages, ranging from the rather extensive literature on Germanic and Romance languages to areas with smaller circles of interest such as the Celtic languages, also receive appropriate attention. Bibliographical coverage of both descriptive and historical linguistics is noted. The survey indicates duplication of effort in certain fields and suggests the need for co‐operative effort.
THE FOREIGN‐LANGUAGE PROBLEM FACING SCIENTISTS AND TECHNOLOGISTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM—REPORT OF A RECENT SURVEY
Authors: WOOD D.N.
Published: January 2008

The foreign‐language barrier facing British scientists is a function of a, the amount and value of foreign scientific literature produced; b, the linguistic ability of the people wishing to read it; and c, the availability and effectiveness of translation services. To obtain quantitative data on these points the NLL has recently conducted a survey amongst scientists and librarians in the United Kingdom and the present paper presents the more important results. The survey has shown that the language problem is of considerable magnitude and is common to the majority of scientists and technologists. The languages creating the most difficulty are Russian, German, and Japanese. It has also indicated that local translation facilities are not particularly effective and that, as far as national facilities are concerned, British scientists are largely unaware of existing services which might help them to overcome their difficulties. The results of the investigation suggest a number of lines of action which the appropriate authorities might follow. The most important would seem to be the publishing of an international index to translations and the creation within the United Kingdom of a centralized Japanese translation service.
MINIMUM VOCABULARIES IN INFORMATION INDEXING
Authors: MOSS R.
Published: January 2008

Words have no precision, though in information storage and retrieval we are required to act as if they did. We have, therefore, to impose certain arbitrary conditions to reduce the element of personal interpretation. ‘Meaning’ must be removed from the indexing stage to that of vocabulary construction. Vocabularies can be reduced to a minimum, first to a core of terms used in a specialist science, and, following Russell, ultimately to undefined terms symbolic of sense experience. ‘Basic English’ has shown similar minimizing to be feasible for a natural language. The success of Batten cards shows that the principle could be equally applicable to specialist indexing vocabularies.
AN APPLICATION OF UDC TO MACHINE SEARCHING
Authors: CALESS T.W. , KIRK D.B.
Published: January 2008

The UDC as a language for machine retrieval has been tested and found feasible using a collection of seismological literature. The system developed is flexible and can be adjusted to any desired level of exhaustivity of indexing. A description is given of the technique for handling UDC relationships, recording the input data, and searching the data file using an IBM 1401 computer.
CATALOGUING AND CLASSIFICATION IN BRITISH UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES: A SURVEY OF PRACTICES AND PROCEDURES
Authors: FRIEDMAN JOAN , JEFFREYS ALAN
Published: January 2008

A survey was made by questionnaire of cataloguing and classification in fifty‐one university libraries. The returned questionnaires revealed many, differences in the classification systems, cataloguing codes, and filing rules used, as well as in the kind and amount of detail in a catalogue entry. There were wide variations in the estimates by libraries of the annual output of a hypothetical ‘average’ cataloguer. There was little uniformity in the statistical data collected by libraries of the work of their cataloguing departments. Little use was made of existing centralized cataloguing services and reasons for this are suggested. More study of user's catalogue needs is necessary. The problems of standardization must be resolved if mechanized techniques are to be fully exploited.
OPENING THE BLACK BOX OF ‘RELEVANCE’
Authors: CUADRA CARLOS A. , KATTER ROBERT V.
Published: January 2008

The purpose of this project was to identify variables thought to affect relevance judgments and conduct a series of laboratory studies to determine the effects of these variables on relevance judgments. This paper discusses the variable of ‘implicit use orientations’—the particular attitude taken by a subject (judge) about the intended use of a document. One hundred and forty judges rated each of nine abstracts for relevance to several short information requirement statements. The same judges then repeated the ratings, each adopting (assuming) one of fourteen use orientations described to them. It was found that the particular use orientation assumed by the judge has a marked effect on relevance judgments. It was also found that implicit use orientations can be analysed in terms of their underlying structure and that their study offers the possibility of discovering the conditions under which one person can accurately simulate and use the implicit use orientations of another. Relevance judgments have been used as a basis for measures designed to evaluate the effectiveness of information retrieval systems. These judgments have usually been accepted at face value and have not been subjected to critical scrutiny. There is reason to believe, however, that as ordinarily obtained, they may be unreliable and sensitive to a number of conditions of measurement that have not been carefully controlled in previous evaluation studies.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION, ARRANGEMENT, AND RETRIEVAL
Authors: VICKERY B.C.
Published: January 2008

The design of bibliographic records for computer input is explored. The elements of a record provide bibliographic description, serve as retrieval keys, facilitate ordered filing, and indicate locations. The effect of each of these functions on the form of the record is discussed. Problems are raised that must be resolved before an optimal record can be designed.
THE MEASURES OF INFORMATION RETRIEVAL EFFECTIVENESS PROPOSED BY SWETS
Authors: BROOKES B.C.
Published: January 2008

Objective comparisons of the effectiveness of IR techniques are needed for development of IR systems. The measures proposed by Swets, which offer important advantages, are analysed and critically discussed. Modifications of the Swets measures, designed to increase their generality and to facilitate their interpretation in terms of system variables, are proposed.
TUITION IN THE USE OF THE LIBRARY AND OF SUBJECT LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD
Authors: CROSSLEY C.A.
Published: January 2008

This paper describes work done in the University of Bradford to give instruction to readers in the use of the library and the use of subject literature, with particular reference to undergraduate and postgraduate students. A first‐year course includes general introduction, arrangement of stock, and content of catalogues. A more advanced course in the second or third year concentrates on the bibliographical tools within the students' own subjects, and demonstrates the principles of literature searching. Practical work is an essential adjunct to this course. The teaching is examined critically and several weaknesses are noted. The appropriateness of the librarian to conduct these courses is justified.
PHYSICS ABSTRACTS AS A SOURCE OF ABSTRACTS IN ASTRONOMY
Authors: O'CONNOR J.G. , MEADOWS A.J.
Published: January 2008

The frequency and consistency of selection by Physics Abstracts of astronomical articles from three major journals, Nature, Astrophysical Journal, and Icarus, have been investigated. This has involved an examination of the probability of selection of an article as a function of its subject matter. As a result, it is possible to specify which fields of astronomy are best covered by Physics Abstracts. The time‐lag between the appearance of these articles and the subsequent appearance of their abstracts has also been examined.
THE LAW OF CONSTANT CITATION FOR SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE
Authors: GOMPERTS M.C.
Published: January 2008

In listing the literature concerning the subject of ‘vibrating plates’ the following law was noticed: Rj x aj,t=constant=5·6 where Rj is the ‘citation factor’ for the year, j, and aj,t stands for the total number of articles that have appeared up to and including year j. ‘This ‘citation law’ is based on the remarkable fact that in more than 150 years the mean number of relevant citations per article per year has remained constant, viz. 2·8, in spite of the fact that after 1950 three times as many articles have been published as in the period before 1950.
DOCUMENTATION NOTE
Authors: MUKHOPADHYOY A.
Published: January 2008

The field of social psychology has only been cursorily glanced at by the critics of UDC, including Miss Kyle who took 301.151 for the whole of socio‐psychology and overlooked the fact that many of its subordinate concepts remain scattered all over the facet 30 sociology. The English abridged edition, in comparison with the French 2nd edition, offers a more restricted idea plane under 301.151 shared by two terms: ‘social psychology’ and ‘instinct’ eliminating the other ‘qualités socialement importantes d'individus’. The remaining terms transposed, too, having offered social psychology the first position in the sequence. Thus, the former may be assumed to have either an equal or a superior status or even the terms may be supposed to be nearly identical. The last one particularly has its base on the twenty‐one subclasses enumerated under 301.151 which represent nothing but varied instincts. These instincts had been respected once as the only basic units of social psychology similar to the definitely agreed upon units of any firm sciences.
AN EXPERIMENT IN INDEXING BY WORD‐CHOOSING
Authors: SHAW T.N. , ROTHMAN H.
Published: January 2008

The time and effort involved in indexing documents can be reduced by requiring the indexer only to underline the words he regards as significant, instead of allocating class numbers or concepts. An experimental index to scientific reports made by word‐choosing in this way compares favourably with a concept‐based index. An index derived from words chosen by information scientists is better than those derived from words chosen by authors or keypunch operators. If abstracts are available of documents recorded as a result of a search, irrelevant material can quickly be sifted out by hand, with only a slight loss of relevant material. A KWIC‐type index recovers the most relevant documents almost as well as more elaborate indexes, and several independent simple indexes may give higher recall than a single more elaborate index.
STATISTICS OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL ARTICLES
Authors: VICKERY B.C.
Published: January 2008

A new estimate of the number of currently published scientific and technical periodicals has been put forward by K. P. Barr of the National Lending Library. It may be of interest to supplement this with some figures on the number and distribution of articles within these periodicals. These figures are derived from a survey undertaken at the NLL early in 1964.
AUTHOR VERSUS TITLE: A COMPARATIVE SURVEY OF THE ACCURACY OF THE INFORMATION WHICH THE USER BRINGS TO THE LIBRARY CATALOGUE
Authors: AYRES F.H. , GERMAN JANICE , LOUKES N. , SEARLE R.H.
Published: January 2008

Details are given of a survey carried out in a large scientific special library on the comparative accuracy of the author and title information which the user brings to the catalogue. The sample was restricted to requests for book material. The results are analysed in detail and show the title to be more accurate. Some suggestions are made for extending this type of survey.
DOCUMENTATION NOTES
Authors: ZIPF LIBRARY
Published: January 2008

A recent article by Kozachkov and Khursin, entitled ‘The basic probability distribution in information flow systems,’ describes the fundamental similarity of a number of known statistical regularities in the flow of information. They propose a basic model, called the ‘hyperbolic ladder’, and relate it, in particular, to work in linguistics by Zipf, in documentation by Bradford, and in the science of science by Lotka. The purpose of this note is to speculate further on the relevance of Zipf's law in librarianship.
The Automatic Generation of Index Languages
Authors: BATTY C.D.
Published: January 2008

‘To me there appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, namely, resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause or effect.’
COMPUTER INDEXING OF MEDICAL ARTICLES—PROJECT MEDICO
Authors: ARTANDI SUSAN
Published: January 2008

An automatic indexing method is described in which index tags for documents are generated by the computer. The computer scans the text of periodical articles and automatically assigns to them index terms with their respective weights on the basis of explicitly defined text characteristics. A machine file of document references with their associated index terms is automatically produced which can be searched on a co‐ordinate basis for the retrieval of specified drug‐related information.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM FOR COMBUSTION RESEARCH
Authors: DAVIES H.G.
Published: January 2008

The development of, and initial operating experience with, a multiple‐access information retrieval system is described. Based upon the use of eighty‐column punched cards and the ICT 302 Sorter, it was devised specially for, and with the active co‐operation of, research scientists concerned with the fundamental aspects of combustion. The content and arrangement of the classification scheme used is outlined. A preliminary analysis is made of the searching techniques applied to, and the retrieval response for, the inquiries received from research scientists during the first two years of operation of the retrieval system.
THE POINT OF VIEW OF INDUSTRY
Authors: CAMPBELL D.J.
Published: January 2008

The report of the Dainton Committee is the result of the first examination by a Government‐appointed committee of the national libraries. The Committee ‘early took the view that the National Libraries must be seen in relation to … other parts of the national information system’. Its proposals do not touch industrial libraries directly, but only by way of their effects on the national libraries.
THE NEEDS OF THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY
Authors: KURTI N.
Published: January 2008

Just as the Dainton Report is written in the first person plural so this brief discussion of how the conclusions of the Report might affect scientists is written in the first person singular. But here the similarity ends. The Dainton Report expresses the carefully considered opinions of a group of people, arrived at after listening to the arguments, pleadings, and exhortations of individuals, of institutions, etc., and therefore may be regarded as reflecting—if not a majority view—at least a substantial concensus of opinion throughout the country. This is far from true in my case. I did not consult my colleagues and in the few cases where I was familiar with the evidence submitted to the Dainton Committee I tried to forget what I knew. So, what follows is a very personal statement, based mainly on guesses and hunches rather than on rigorously established facts. My excuse for this slapdash approach is that to do full justice to the task would require a detailed and time‐consuming study of how the scientific community uses its libraries.
Empirical Hyperbolic Distributions (Bradford‐Zipf‐Mandelbrot) for Bibliometric Description and Prediction
Authors: FAIRTHORNE ROBERT A.
Published: January 2008

Since 1960, and especially during the past three years, many papers have appeared about particular manifestations and applications of a certain class of empirical laws to a field that may be labelled conveniently ‘Bibliometrics’. This term, resuscitated by Alan Pritchard (see page 348), denotes, in my paraphrase, quantitative treatment of the properties of recorded discourse and behaviour appertaining to it.
DOCUMENTATION NOTES
Authors: GROOS OLE V. , PRITCHARD ALAN
Published: January 2008

Meadows analysed the citations appearing in the 1963–5 volumes of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, eliminating duplicate citations from consideration. He concluded, with certain assumptions, that a library of the twelve top‐ranking journals (which I assume to be ranked by number of citations per title), each held in a fifteen‐year back‐run, would meet approximately two‐thirds of the British demand for astronomical articles.
Evaluation Tests of Information Retrieval Systems
Authors: CLEVERDON CYRIL
Published: January 2008

Thirty years or more ago, a favoured question in examination papers for librarians was some variation on the theme ‘Compare the merits of a classified catalogue and an alphabetical subject catalogue’. This was a subject which it was possible to write on or to discuss at great length, advancing a number of theoretical arguments or opinions expressed by pundits, without ever stating a single demonstrable fact. When, in the early 1950's, various people, such as Taube and Mooers, proposed new techniques for indexing, the reaction from the traditionally‐minded was such that it appeared there was to be a repetition of all the old arguments. In an editorial in American Documentation in 1955, Perry expressed a viewpoint, shared by many others, when he wrote:
SOME THOUGHTS ON CLASSIFICATION FOR RETRIEVAL
Authors: SPARCK JONES KAREN
Published: January 2008

The suggestion that classifications for retrieval should be constructed automatically raises some serious problems concerning the sorts of classification which are required, and the way in which formal classification theories should be exploited, given that a retrieval classification is required for a purpose. These difficulties have not been sufficiently considered, and the paper therefore attempts an analysis of them, though no solutions of immediate application can be suggested. Starting with the illustrative proposition that a polythetic, multiple, unordered classification is required in automatic thesaurus construction, this is considered in the context of classification in general, where eight sorts of classification can be distinguished, each covering a range of class definitions and class‐finding algorithms. The problem which follows is that since there is generally no natural or best classification of a set of objects as such, the evaluation of alternative classifications requires cither formal criteria of goodness of fit, or, if a classification is required for a purpose, a precise statement of that purpose. In any case a substantive theory of classification is needed, which does not exist; and since sufficiently precise specifications of retrieval requirements are also lacking, the only currently available approach to automatic classification experiments for information retrieval is to do enough of them.
JAPANESE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL PERIODICALS
Authors: FOO‐KUNE C.F.
Published: January 2008

European language content in Japanese journals is analysed from the data provided in various editions of the Directory of Japanese Scientific Periodicals. Figures for 1957, 1962, 1964, and 1967 are compared indicating a diminishing trend of European language content in Japanese journals. Comparative fluency in European languages of Japanese scientists and engineers is shown by a subject breakdown.
THE DAINTON EVIDENCE
Authors: WOLEDGE G.
Published: January 2008

Some of the documentary evidence before the Dainton Committee was published as appendixes to their report. Some of it has been published elsewhere, and is no doubt omitted from these volumes on that account, probably rightly, though it is a pity that they do not give references to it. Some is omitted presumably as not being ‘principal’—and if it was in fact less valuable than the poorest of the documents printed here, that decision was unquestionably right. As might be expected, there is much expression of opinion, often obviously ill‐based and often contradictory; but there is also a great deal of factual information on the national libraries and their users which will be useful for reference for a long time (and could well form the subject of another review); and much that throws light on the recommendations of the Dainton Committee and the desirable form of the future national library system.
UDC USER PROFILES AS DEVELOPED FOR A COMPUTER‐BASED SDI SERVICE IN THE IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY
Authors: MCCASH W.H. , CARMICHAEL J.J.
Published: January 2008

Extension of the Selective Dissemination of Information system required the adoption of computer‐based techniques. The indexing language adopted is UDC and it was necessary to construct user profiles based on this classification. Profiles have been compiled for individual clients of the service, for works within the British Steel Corporation, and for broad fields of activity within the iron and steel industry. Use of the service has shown that UDC provides a satisfactory basis for profile compilation. The majority of profiles so far constructed have relevance of over 95%, based on user assessment. Possible future developments in the compilation of the profiles are considered.
FEASIBILITY STUDY OF A SCHEME FOR RECONCILING THESAURI COVERING A COMMON SUBJECT
Authors: NEVILLE H.H.
Published: January 2008

The feasibility is examined of devising a scheme for operating a joint keyword system in a given subject area using several independently compiled thesauri. It is suggested that if the individual keywords of each participating thesaurus represent identifiable concepts, and these concepts are given unique code numbers, then the code numbers enable the keywords of any participating thesaurus to be converted into the appropriate keywords of any other participant. Incompatibilities between keyword systems arise from differences in the selection and form of keywords. Eleven types of incompatibility are identified and a method of reconciliation is proposed for each. The types of incompatibility that can arise in a single language include those that arise between one language and another, so that a multilingual joint system presents no additional problems.
Management information from housekeeping routines
Authors: MAIDMENT WM R.
Published: January 2008

It is generally accepted that applications of mechanization in libraries concern two broadly distinct areas of interest: (a) housekeeping routines, and (b) information retrieval. If the latter is taken to include the retrieval of bibliographical facts and citations the areas cannot, in practice, be wholly differentiated since the required input involves the technical processes of cataloguing and classification, or refinements of them, applied as part of a routine treatment of accessions. With manually operated systems the purist might wish to distinguish these technical processes from routines such as ordering procedures, accession methods, accounting, and stock control. In a mechanized system the distinction becomes meaningless because of the pressure to exploit to the maximum each unit of input.
AUTOMATIC INDEXING USING BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATIONS
Authors: SALTON G.
Published: January 2008

Bibliographic citations attached to technical documents have been used variously to refer to related items in the literature, to confer importance to a given piece of writing, and to serve as supplementary indications of document content. In the present study, citations are used directly to identify document content, and an attempt is made to evaluate their effectiveness in a retrieval environment. It is shown that the use of bibliographic citations in addition to the normal keyword‐type indicators produces improved retrieval performance, and that in some circumstances, citations are more effective for retrieval purposes than other more conventional terms and concepts.
COMPUTER‐AIDED AUTOMATIC GENERATION OF A STRUCTURED DOCUMENTARY LANGUAGE: PRELIMINARY STUDY
Authors: WOLFF‐TERROINE M. , RIMBERT D.
Published: January 2008

This is a description of the first stage of an attempt to improve a thesaurus by providing it with new terms derived by computer analysis of semantic proximity between concepts from a large file of 20,000 documents. At the first stage the semantic proximity between concept and core words was established on the level of a set of higher complexity. This set is defined when making the qualitative and quantitative choice of the concepts capable of being grouped into classes. The second stage will be the classification of terms belonging to that coherent set by clustering.
THE EXTENSION OF USERS' LITERATURE AWARENESS AS A MEASURE OF RETRIEVAL PERFORMANCE, AND ITS APPLICATION TO MEDLARS
Authors: MILLER WILLIAM L.
Published: January 2008

The performance of a retrieval system with a file of only a few hundred references can be measured by assessing the relevance of each reference to each of a number of queries. A suitable measure of retrieval performance is then the Recall ratio—the fraction of the relevant references that are retrieved by the system. When the file is large this method of measuring performance is not practicable, and Recall cannot be measured although it can be estimated. A number of estimation procedures are examined and found unsatisfactory. Another measure of retrieval performance is the Extension ratio which is approximately the ratio of the quantity of known relevant references before and after putting a query to the retrieval system. The properties of this measure are examined and it is applied to 315 MEDLARS searches.
A SINGLE COMPUTER‐BASED SYSTEM FOR BOTH CURRENT AWARENESS AND RETROSPECTIVE SEARCH: OPERATING EXPERIENCE WITH ASSASSIN
Authors: CLOUGH C.R. , BRAMWELL K.M.
Published: January 2008

ASSASSIN as designed and operated by ICI Agricultural Division, provides from, a single paper tape input a current awareness service by SDI and a retrospective search both by a weighted term machine search and printed KWOC‐type indexes. Programs for producing structured thesauri are part of the package. Input is in the form of abstracts from both published and internal sources. The system has operated for more than a year at the Agricultural Division and is currently in use at five other locations. Flexibility of the package is demonstrated by the variety of applications. This paper outlines the various applications and shows how a single package may be used complete, or in part, or with modification. Machine costs are given for the major application. The system was designed with the possible input of externally produced machine readable data in mind. The intended application of the package in conjunction with tapes such as those of the Institute for Scientific Information source and Chemical Abstracts Condensates is outlined.
A PROBABILISTIC SEARCH STRATEGY FORMEDLARS
Authors: MILLER WILLIAM L.
Published: January 2008

One technique for searching a Co‐ordinate Index is to compare each reference with a Boolean expression of index terms. This divides the file into retrieved and not‐retrieved references. An alternative is to assign each reference a score calculated from its index terms and to retrieve the N highest scoring references in the file. This scoring technique has several advantages in theory, and it performed slightly better in a retrieval test with N equal to the number of references retrieved by the corresponding Boolean search. In the test a minimum value of N = 10 was used, and when less than this number of references matched the Boolean search requirement, the Scoring technique successfully widened the scope of the search and retrieved twice as many relevant references as the Boolean searches.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE EURATOM‐THESAURUS
Authors: TOMA EUGENIU
Published: January 2008

An analysis of the rank‐frequency distribution of the EURATOM‐thesaurus was carried out. Zipf's law (a hyperbolic function) was not found to be suitable for this distribution, and an exponential law was used. The total entropy of the thesaurus calculated by means of this exponential function was found in good agreement with the actual entropy of the thesaurus. The exponential function may provide a criterion to ‘revise’ some zones of thesauri.
A THEORY FOR PRACTICAL EDUCATION IN LIBRARIANSHIP
Authors: STAVELEY RONALD
Published: January 2008

Following in the bibliographical wake of a research student, I was reminded recently how lacking in novelty are most of our attitudes to professional education. Contexts and grounds of argument have changed, but some conflicts within the Library Association of the 1880s are recognizably those of the last decade. One's own shorter term of professional memories can confirm that forty years of discussion and contention are likely to be very repetitive. One accounts for this in part, of course, by the likelihood of recurrence of the same range of personalities, with similar predispositions, temperaments, preferences, and prejudices. For the rest, perhaps the greater part, it seems not unlikely that disagreements about education reflect continuing disagreements about the profession. The idea is not ruled out by the undoubted progress that librarianship has made, for one cannot feel sure that the momentum of social change has not been more effective than librarians in conference and committee. It seems to me reasonable, therefore, that we should seek an adequate theoretical basis for the practice of librarianship, before we attempt theories or judgements about its professional studies.
COMPARATIVE EFFICIENCY OF SEARCHING TITLES, ABSTRACTS, AND INDEX TERMS IN A FREE‐TEXT DATA BASE
Authors: BARKER F.H. , VEAL D.C. , WYATT B.K.
Published: January 2008

The choice of a suitable data base for providing an information service is governed by factors of coverage, performance, and cost. The cost of the data base to subscribers is a known quantity, and the coverage is decided by the data base producers. This paper describes an investigation into the relative performance of the four major Chemical Abstracts Service magnetic tape data‐bases, Chemical Titles (CT), which contains the titles of citations only, Chemical Abstracts Condensates (CAC), which contains titles enriched with keyword phrases, Chemical‐Biological Activities (CBAC), and Polymer Science and Technology (POST), both of which contain full digests in addition to titles. The performance was measured in terms of the relative currency of the four data‐bases, and the retrieval efficiency of profiles searched against them. Fifty questions from industrial and government research organizations were used in the experiment. Search profiles corresponding to these questions were constructed for searching against each data‐base, output was assessed for relevance by users, and profile performance figures (precision and recall ratios) were calculated for each profile. The overall retrieval efficiency of profiles searched against data‐bases containing titles only, titles‐plus‐keywords, and titles‐plus‐digests, was calculated, and these results are presented.
TOWARDS AUTOMATIC PROFILE CONSTRUCTION
Authors: BARKER F.H. , VEAL D.C. , WYATT B.K.
Published: January 2008

This paper describes part of the Chemical Abstracts Condensate Evaluation (CAC Evaluation) carried out by the United Kingdom Chemical Information Service (UKCIS).
INDEXING—PERMUTED, ROTATED, OR CYCLED
Authors: KEMP D.A. , SIMPSON I.S. , WILSON T.D.
Published: January 2008

There is some confusion in the literature with regard to the use of the terms ‘permuted’, ‘rotated’, ‘cycled’.
AN ENQUIRY INTO THE THEORY OF INTEGRATIVE LEVELS AS THE BASIS FOR A GENERALIZED CLASSIFICATION SCHEME
Authors: ANN SCOTT HUCKABY SARAH
Published: January 2008

The adaptability of the theory of integrative levels to a generalised classification scheme is questioned in that its hypotheses have not been adequately developed and confirmed. Application to the humanistic disciplines seems particularly inappropriate. Relationships between nineteenth century philosophical systems are traced and the Classification Research Group's dependence upon James Duff Brown's classification scheme is emphasized. It is suggested that not enough cognisance has been taken of twentieth century relativistic thinking in which space‐time is treated as a continuum.
BRITISH INDUSTRIAL LIBRARIES BEFORE 1939
Authors: MARSHALL MARGARET R.
Published: January 2008

The libraries of British industrial firms are traced from their beginnings in the chemical industry in the last thirty years of the nineteenth century till 1939, by which date they had spread to many branches of industry and had been recognized as an important part of the industrial and library worlds, thus establishing standard patterns of work. The origins and significance of Aslib are discussed.