bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
AN EXPERIMENTAL CURRENT AWARENESS SERVICE IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Authors: HALL J.L. , PALMER JOHN , POOLE J.B.
Published: January 2008

Details are given of an experimental information service sponsored by the Office for Scientific and Technical Information through its Documentation Processing Centre as part of a programme to test the suitability of established computer techniques in the field of the social sciences. In the period 30 October to 20 December 1968, 4,500 index entries for material in the public policy area of British domestic affairs were prepared in the House of Commons Library and computer‐processed and printed by the Culham Laboratory of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. Weekly Current Literature Bulletins were produced in thirty‐six subject fields and distributed to participants (over four hundred Members of Parliament and about one hundred others) according to their expressed interests. A large majority of the MPs who answered a questionnaire said that they would like to see a permanent service on similar lines. Regular machine‐produced cumulations of all or part of the input over a period could be a feature of such a service.
PHOTOCOPIES v. PERIODICALS
Authors: BROOKES B.C.
Published: January 2008

Evidence provided by the Dainton Report indicates that special libraries in the UK are far from fully exploiting the photocopying services provided by the national libraries. As these photocopying services are legally obliged to operate at cost, they offer significant economies to any special library which exploits them systematically. This paper describes a simple graphical method of estimating the savings that can be made, or the extended subject coverage that can be obtained at no additional cost, by substituting photocopies for relevant papers in the peripheral periodicals relating to any well‐defined scientific or technical subject. Though photocopying charges must be realistic, the confident exploitation of the national photocopying services depends on the avoidance of arbitrary jumps in photocopying charges.
THE ‘HALF‐LIFE’ OF PERIODICAL LITERATURE: APPARENT AND REAL OBSOLESCENCE
Authors: LINE M.B.
Published: January 2008

The expression ‘half‐life’, borrowed from physics, has appeared quite frequently in the literature on documentation since 1960, when an article by Burton and Kebler on The ‘half‐life’ of some scientific and technical literatures was published, although it had certainly been used previously. Burton and Kebler point out that literature becomes obsolescent rather than disintegrating (as in its original meaning), so that ‘half‐life’ means ‘half the active life’, and this is commonly understood as meaning the time during which one‐half of the currently active literature was published. Numerous studies have been carried out, mainly by the analysis of citations, to establish obsolescence rates of the literature of different subjects. Bourne points out that different studies have given widely different results, so that many of the ‘half‐life’ figures reported are not valid beyond the particular sample of literature or users surveyed; certainly they cannot be used as accurate measures for discriminating between different subject‐fields.
SWITCHING LANGUAGES FOR INDEXING
Authors: COATES E.J.
Published: January 2008

The paper describes some properties of simple interconversion devices which enable material intially subject indexed by a particular indexing system to be made available to other institutions using different indexing languages in such a form as to be readily integrated into their indexes. Reference is made to the outline Intermediate Lexicon which is the germinal form of a switching language for the field of information science. Difficulties and problems in effecting satisfactory information transfer through such an interconversion scheme are explored, and suggestions made for the lines upon which further research needs to be undertaken. The author was the Classification Research Group representative on the international working party concerned with the Intermediate Lexicon.
DOCUMENTATION NOTE
Authors: BOUMAN H.
Published: January 2008

Many chemical patent specifications use a so‐called ‘Markush formula’ to delimit the invention from the prior art.
THE COMPLEXITY OF THE MODELLING OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Authors: MARTYN J. , VICKERY B.C.
Published: January 2008

An information system is the result of a hierarchy of decisions—Who are the system users? What are their information needs? What formal services will be offered to them? Through what media will services be provided? How will these media be produced? At every point there are alternative answers to these questions.
HUMAN v. MACHINE SELECTION FOR CURRENT AWARENESS IN MASS SPECTROMETRY
Authors: SEARLE R.H.
Published: January 2008

Human selection of periodical references from the full text, for inclusion in the Mass Spectrometry Bulletin, is compared with the retrieval from the same source material by the mechanized current awareness SDI services of CT and ASCA. Results show human selection to have retrieved substantially more references than SDI using brief, high relevance profiles. Experiments with CT using a larger profile show an increase in recall but a drop in precision. Precision is assessed in relation to the selection/rejection policy for the Bulletin, which is briefly discussed. The effectiveness of the SDI services as a means of indicating references in periodicals outside the range of those examined in detail is also discussed.
ACCESS AND RECOGNITION: FROM USERS' DATA TO CATALOGUE ENTRIES
Authors: TAGLIACOZZO RENATA , ROSENBERG LAWRENCE , KOCHEN MANFRED
Published: January 2008

Patterns of searching in library catalogues were analysed, using the data from a large survey of the use of three university library and one public library catalogues. ‘Known‐item’ searches were the object of the study. Success or failure of the search was correlated to degree of correctness and completeness of the searcher's information about title and author of the item that he wished to locate. Factors involved in searching strategies were discussed. The double role played by both the title and the author as a way of access to the catalogue and as a means for identifying the right entry was examined.
A SIMPLE METHOD FOR CODING GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATIONS IN A POST‐COORDINATE INDEX
Authors: JONES KEVIN P.
Published: January 2008

Place names are a problem in co‐ordinate indexing, in that they exist in very large numbers, whilst individual names may be used only infrequently. To counteract this inflow of features, and a corresponding increase in feature cards, Jolley has suggested a method which employs subcodes or polygraphs. This system enables a place name to be represented by a random combination of alphabetical letters or numerals. The combinations may consist of two or more characters. In this way Manchester could be expressed as A+B or A+B+C or any other random arrangement. If one alphabet is used, two‐letter combinations (digraphs) will permit 325 names to be accommodated whilst three‐letter combinations (trigraphs) will accommodate 2,600. The system is simple to apply, but a supplementary index has to be constructed to connect names with codes.
Training for Information Science
Authors: FARRADANE J.
Published: January 2008

Education in information Science is now well established a a postgraduate level in Great Britain, and has recently also been started to a graduate level. The scope of the subject is seen as both practical and theoretical,and as a professional training. The position up to 1965 was fully surveyed by me in a previous report. New developments during the last five years have taken place almost only in Great Britain; of education abroad—apart from an increase in the number of courses, mainly of short duration, or only part of more general courses; and, in Europe, at relatively lower levels—there is little new to record. In Europe the field is more generally known as documentation, and tends to correspond rather more with what in England is called special librarianship. In the United States the term ‘information science’ is usually defined as the purely theoretical science of information and information handling, especially by means of computers; the practical aspects have been called ‘information technology’, which is not often dealt with separately from library science. This problem of the relation of information science to library science is still subject to varying interpretations even within one country.
THE GROWTH, UTILITY, AND OBSOLESCENCE OF SCIENTIFIC PERIODICAL LITERATURE
Authors: BROOKES B.C.
Published: January 2008

Line's recently proposed technique for correcting the ‘apparent’ half‐life to allow for the rate of growth of the literature and Vickery's critical analysis of the proposal are both further analysed. Using the concept of utility and considering the sampling variances involved, the paper shows that Line's technique is both questionable and impractical, and that a further factor—the growth of the number of contributors—needs to be allowed for in Vickery's analysis. A collaborative empirical investigation is proposed.
ANALYSES OF BIBLIOGRAPHIES ON BIOCONTROL
Authors: SIMON H.R.
Published: January 2008

In 1967, Martyn published his interesting results on tests of abstract journals. He quoted the handbook of Debach (editor) as a source for a large bibliography on biocontrol. It can be seen from the paper of Rothman that in recent environmental research, biocontrol (the destruction of pests and weeds by natural enemies and diseases and other unconventional methods) has increased continuously. To survey the trends in this field of research several analyses of special bibliographies were carried out. In brief, I would like to give here an example of my own work, thus supplementing the paper of Martyn concerning this special point (Debach).
‘Informatics’
Authors: FOSKETT D.J.
Published: January 2008

The term ‘informatics’ was first advanced formally by the Director of VINITI, A. I. Mikhailov, and his colleagues A. I. Chernyi and R. S. Gilyarevskii, in their paperInformatics—new name for the theory of Scientific Informationpublished at the end of 1966. An English translation was circularized in the beginning of 1967. As the authors state in this paper, they are not the first to use this term, and they quote a review by Professor J. G. Dorfmann of their own bookFundamentals of Scientific Informationin which Dorfmann criticizes the use of other terminology, such as ‘documentation’, ‘documentalistics’, ‘information science’, and so on. Although the authors do not object to the use of the word ‘Documentation’ in the name of the International Federation for Documentation, nevertheless they claim that this term has not found application in the USSR and indeed they apologize for spending some time in discussing its suitability as a name for ‘the new scientific discipline which studies the structure and properties of scientific information as well as the regularities of scientific information activity, its theory, history, methods, and organization’. It is clear that the authors have made a thorough survey of the literature, as might be expected, and they argue fairly about the meaning of most of the terms that have at one time or another been advanced to name this ‘new discipline’. Their definition is as stated above but they are careful to add the rider that Informatics docs not investigate thespecific contentof scientific information, only the structure and properties. In their paper they also advance definitions for ‘information’, ‘scientific information’, ‘scientific information activity’, ‘information officer’, and ‘information scientist’. They have backed up their proposal by changing the title of their own book for its second edition, and the title of the information science fascicule of theReferativnyi Zhurnal, which is now calledInformatiki.
THE EFFECT OF GROWTH ON THE OBSOLESCENCE OF SEMICONDUCTOR PHYSICS LITERATURE
Authors: OLIVER MERRILL R.
Published: January 2008

Semiconductor physics literature is studied in order to investigate recent hypotheses relating obsolescence to the growth in periodical literature and the growth in the number of contributing scientists. The results indicate that obsolescence remains constant and that the two growth rates are, within experimental error, of equal magnitude for this subject over a five‐year period. These results are seen to be inconsistent with the assumption that an exponentially‐growing literature possesses a constant utility.
POSSIBILITIES FOR A NEW UNIVERSAL DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION
Authors: DAHLBERG INGETRAUT
Published: January 2008

Reasons are given for a proposed new universal decimal classification obtained by re‐allocating the subject fields of the UDC main classes according to present day views, state of knowledge, and priorities, and to subdivide these main classes only by subfields of subject fields. The specific facets of each field should be represented by a uniform array of special auxiliaries attached to the fields through the technique of interrupted subdivision. These should express the following categories: (1) Theory, (2) Objects, (3) Processes, (4) Attributes, (6) Order, organization, (7) Relation, (8) Determination, (9) Evaluation ((5) is left free for the moment). Proposals for further simplification of the scheme are outlined regarding the general categories, the symbols used, and the rules for syntagmatic organization, taking into account the implications of computer technology. Possible changes in the layout and editions of such a new classification are discussed.
STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION IN RETRIEVAL LANGUAGES
Authors: VICKERY B.C.
Published: January 2008

Retrieval languages may have varied structural characteristics, and these are summarized. The languages serve varied purposes in information systems, and a number of these are identified. The relations between structure and function are discussed and suggestions made as to the most suitable structures needed for various purposes.
FREE TEXT WORD RETRIEVAL AND SCIENTIST INDEXING: PERFORMANCE PROFILES AND COSTS
Authors: HERSEY D.F. , FOSTER W.R. , STALDER E.W. , CARLSON W.T.
Published: January 2008

Comparative performance profiles were determined, by two independent scientific information centres, for on‐line retrieval by means of (a) tree text words and (b) subject indexing codes, from a data base of 4,600 descriptions of on‐going research projects in four broad subject areas. Altogether, thirty‐nine questions that users had previously asked of the Science Information Exchange (SIE) of the Smithsonian Institution, and that were in the four subject areas, were employed by SIE staffscientists, and twelve of these were independently used by staff members of the Biological Sciences Communication Project (BSCP) of the George Washington University. Results for the two studies showed average recall values 30–40% higher, and relevance values 15–20% higher, for subject index code use as compared with text word use. Advantages and disadvantages of both approaches are discussed.
THE USE OF OLDER LITERATURE AND ITS OBSOLESCENCE
Authors: SANDISON A.
Published: January 2008

Terminology and parameters for describing the relation between figures for the use of library literature and for its age are discussed. Unless a correction for growth is applied, half‐life fails a simple test of suitability, as do Brookes's ageing and utility factors. Results based on cumulated data have other important disadvantages. Relative ‘use‐per‐item’ figures are satisfactory. The need to relate terminology more closely to the facts they represent is stressed: item‐consultation decay rate, and 50% consultation probability age are suggested and defined. In the context of citation studies, item‐citation decay rate and 50% citation probability age are equivalent and avoid similar objections. In data from NRLSI, item‐consultation decay rates are only approximately exponential. Different rates are demonstrated for updating and basic searches, for academic and other types of readers, and for types of literature. For some historical searches negative decay rates were found in the NRLSI and BML.
PERSONAL PATTERNS OF INFORMATION USE IN AN INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT LABORATORY
Authors: MOTE L.J.B.
Published: January 2008

In his thesis entitled ‘Managing the Flow of Scientific and Technological Information’ Professor T.J. Allen of MIT was able to show that patterns of information usage could be derived by various means such as the use of questionnaires, and by observations made among the scientists and technologists during their work in R & D establishments in the USA—and by the study of parallel projects in which two or more R&D groups work on the same problem, he was able to relate these patterns to the performance of the scientific personnel engaged on that problem.
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION
Authors: HEANEY H.J.
Published: January 2008

Fifty years ago the first official statistics for British university libraries were published by the then newly‐established University Grants Committee. Our present purpose is not to review the intervening half‐century nor to compare British attempts to collect statistics in the past with those of other countries. Thompson has already covered much of that ground. Our aim is to consider the sources of information which currently supplement the UGC returns and to comment upon future developments.
MEASURING READERS' FAILURE AT THE SHELF
Authors: URQUHART JOHN A. , SCHOFIELD J.L.
Published: January 2008

This paper is concerned with the availability of books known to be held by the Library. It outlines a simple survey method whereby readers record the non‐availability of books which they are looking for. The survey has already been installed at four university libraries, but the results from only one library are considered here. These results show how a librarian can find out the degree of non‐availability or failure in any particular area of the library, the causes of failure, and even the particular items which are in heavy demand and not available. They also provide information on the degree of co‐operation by the readers, the number of titles failing once, twice, three times etc., the overlap of demand for popular books by different groups of borrowers, the waiting time for books that failed, the pattern of demand for particular books over a period of time, the relationship between failure and recall, the correlation of failure from one term to the next, and the relative use of books inside and outside the library. From the results it was possible to recommend certain changes in library procedure which should have reduced failure, and to compare the titles of books failing in the Main Library with the holdings of a departmental library. The time spent on the survey and the total cost of the survey are also given.
THE USE OF CITATION COUNTING TO IDENTIFY RESEARCH TRENDS
Authors: ROTHMAN HARRY , WOODHEAD MICHAEL
Published: January 2008

The paper describes the analysis and application of manpower statistics to identify some long‐term international research trends in economic entomology and pest control. Movements in research interests, particularly towards biological as opposed to insecticidal methods of control, correlations between these sectors, and the difficulties encountered in the construction of a sampling frame and subsequent analysis, are described.
The literature of librarianship and documentation: the periodicals and their bibliographical control
Authors: COBLANS HERBERT
Published: January 2008

Somewhat paradoxically workers in information are just as typically human as in any other profession in the matter of order in their own backyard. To put it mildly, the situation in our periodicals—their genesis, use, purpose, and efficiency—is just as haphazard, if not more so, as in the whole field of communication. Perhaps we have the lame excuse that we are too busy working out remedies for the bibliographical mess in the literature of the sciences and the technologies. Nevertheless, we must cast a critical eye on the problem, which will have to be tackled both nationally as well as internationally through IFLA, FID, and Unesco.
THE AMBIGUITY OF BRADFORD'S LAW
Authors: WILKINSON ELIZABETH A.
Published: January 2008

Recent discussion of Bradford's law of scatter has been founded on two formulations that are not mathematically equivalent. A method of comparing the two formulations against empirical data is developed, and the results using four sets of existing data are discussed. The results show that one particular formulation is more consistent with the practical situation.
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION: NON‐BOOK MATERIALS
Authors: TREBBLE A.
Published: January 2008

An account of the present ‘state of the art’ of the librarianship of non‐book materials must begin with a note on terminology. ‘Audiovisual materials’, ‘non‐print items’, and more imaginatively, ‘metabooks’, are some attempts at a collective description of film materials, sound recordings, and pictures of all kinds. The National Council for Educational Technology (NCET) favour ‘non‐book materials’, abbreviated to NBM. ‘One day, perhaps, the word “document” will be commonly accepted as connoting simply an embodiment of evidence, whether it be in print or pictures or whatever, and we shall take for granted that arrangements for the handling of documents should make provision as a matter of course for all media. In the meantime, the case must not be overlooked, and as an expression “non‐book material” is probably no more offensive and no less apt than its several rivals. “Non‐print document” is perhaps more accurate but is not yet in common use.’ I have adopted NBM.
ON THE INVERSE RELATIONSHIP OF RECALL AND PRECISION
Authors: CLEVERDON CYRIL W.
Published: January 2008

It is now ten years since some slight experimental evidence was presented which appeared to support the hypothesis that there was an inverse relationship between recall and precision. The idea of this was certainly not new; Fairthorne had more than implied it in his discussions on OBNA and ABNO systems, i.e. Only‐But‐Not‐All (high precision) and All‐But‐Not‐Only (high recall). However, it was one of the propositions arising from Cranfield I which met with strong opposition and was quite rightly attacked. In reply to the critical review by Swanson, I had to agree that the simple hypothesis required modification. By the following year test results coming from the experiments by Salton and from Cranfield II made further modification necessary, and the hypothesis was finally put forward to read as follows: ‘Within a single system, assuming that a sequence of sub‐searches for a particular question is made in the logical order of expected decreasing precision, and the requirements are those stated in the question, there is an inverse relationship between recall and precision, if the results of a number of different searches are averaged. This, it will be noted, has four important qualifications to the basic statement.
TOWARDS A UNIVERSAL SEARCH FORMULATION LANGUAGE FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
Authors: HARLEY A.J. , LE MINOR M. , WEIL A.
Published: January 2008

It is not with any Utopian optimism that we propose a universal search formulation language. Nevertheless, a serious problem exists, and we hope to give some impetus to the forces of constructiveness and rationality.
MEASURING READERS' FAILURE AT THE SHELF IN THREE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
Authors: URQUHART JOHN A. , SCHOFIELD J.L.
Published: January 2008

This paper continues the reporting of the Unit's work on a method of investigating how often readers fail to find what they are looking for on the shelves, why they fail, and what particular books they fail to find. The method used is a slight modification of the earlier one—readers were asked to record on a slip provided the details of the book or periodical they were looking for, or subject area they were looking in, their academic status, and the date, and then to place the slip in an adjoining box. From analysis of these ‘failure’ slips it was possible to determine the cause of the reader's failure, the individual book the reader was looking for, and the pattern of failure for different groups of volumes. A new development was surveys of samples of readers, carried out during the fortnight of peak demand. Answers to these surveys provided information on the effect of failure on a reader's work, what action he took after failing, whether he found adequate substitutes, how many books he found by browsing, and what proportion of the books he consulted he borrowed. Some of these answers could be checked by a direct count of the books used in, and borrowed from, the library. The investigations were carried out in three University libraries, each with its own characteristic library structure and teaching patterns. These differences were reflected in the results obtained. It is hoped that the methods of investigation used can be employed by librarians to investigate the effectiveness of some of the services in their own libraries.
A VIEW OF THE LITERATURE OF ECONOMICS
Authors: FLETCHER JOHN
Published: January 2008

The article is an abbreviated form of the author's MA thesis, and comprises the results of an analysis of publication and citation of economics literature. The growth of the monograph literature of economics seems to be below average, but a high birthrate of economics journals together with a growth in their size gives a high growth rate of periodical literature. From the analysis of citations in nine journals for 1950, 1960, and 1968 a shortening of the active life of both journal and non‐journal literature is found. A high degree of concentration of journal use is shown, over 70% of journal citations being from 20 titles, and the concentration is shown to be increasing. A rise in the use of unpublished material, especially working papers is indicated. Comparisons are made of the research use, measured by citations, with undergraduate use, measured by an analysis of reading lists at three British universities. Some tentative implications of the results for library policy are suggested.
CLASSIFICATION IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
Authors: GILCHRIST ALAN
Published: January 2008

The construction industry has particular problems in its handling of general and project documentation, arising largely from the separation of the design and construction functions, and the large number of firms involved. The Department of the Environment has issued a report proposing improvements in the total information system which suggests that classification is the key factor in any programme of work. In this paper a general account is given of the problems, the work of the DoE, the existing schemes; and proposals are put forward for the compilation of a ‘metasystem’ which would be used to control or steer the conventions used for information handling.
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION
Authors: KOCHEN MANFRED
Published: January 2008

In 1936, when H. G. Wells presented his proposal for a ‘World Encyclopaedia’ to the Royal Institution, an action‐oriented response commensurate with the magnitude of his idea did not ensue. ‘It is a super university I am thinking of, a world brain; no less’, he said. The speech was printed in an obscure book titled World Brain, which is now out of print and hardly ever cited or discussed where it should be.
CHARACTERISTICS OF PUBLISHED CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
Authors: MILLS P.R.
Published: January 2008

A sample of conference proceedings received at the National Lending Library in 1970 has been analysed for publication delay, physical form, subject, publisher, size, language and presence of indexes, synopses, and discussions. The interdependence of these attributes with one another is discussed. Of the conferences that ought to have indexes only 22% have subject indexes and 26% author indexes. One in every four conferences deals with medicine. The median of publication delay is twelve months. Two‐thirds of all conference proceedings have from nine to fifty papers. The social sciences separate out as a distinct group having long publication delays, few large conferences, and being published mainly by university publishers.
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION:
Authors: FORD GEOFFREY
Published: January 2008

The task of the librarian is to achieve his library's objectives. A simplistic statement, perhaps, but it is rare that a library's objectives are defined in any terms other than the broadest—for example, ‘to meet the needs of its users’. In fact, the definition of objectives in any service organization is likely to be an iterative process, but the explicit commitment to users‘ needs (however mystical this concept may be) requires the librarian to examine users’ behaviour as a first step to determining policy. Since a complete state‐of‐the‐art in user behaviour would fill a substantial book, this survey is restricted to drawing together some threads of research of potential application in university libraries. Methodological problems are not discussed here, since these are adequately reviewed elsewhere.
DOCUMENT ANALYSIS AND LINGUISTIC THEORY
Authors: GARDIN JEAN‐CLAUDE
Published: January 2008

In this presentation I shall be concerned with only one aspect of information science and its relation with linguistics: namely document analysis (for a broader survey of ‘Linguistics and information science’, see the recent article published under that title by C. Montgomery (1972); also M. Kay and K. Sparck Jones (1971), and the report prepared for F.I.D. by the same authors, forthcoming; M. Coyaud (1972), in French, deals with many separate facets of the same subject).
STUDIES TO COMPARE RETRIEVAL USING TITLES WITH THAT USING INDEX TERMS
Authors: OLIVE G. , TERRY J.E. , DATTA S.
Published: January 2008

A Selective Dissemination of Information service based on computer scanning of Nuclear Science Abstracts tapes has operated at Harwell since October 1968. Users' interest profiles are constructed using Euratom index terms and NSA subject categories and matched against the Euratom index terms and subject categories assigned to each item in NSA.
RECENT GROWTH OF THE LITERATURE OF BIOCHEMISTRY AND CHANGES IN RANKING OF PERIODICALS
Authors: SENGUPTA I.N.
Published: January 2008

The ideas and techniques of physics have been systematically applied to the study of living matter since the 1950s and 1960s. As a result a rapid and large increase has taken place in the research activity in this field and biophysics and molecular biology have emerged as important areas of study. The consequent enormous growth of literature in the field has created great difficulties in tracking out the significant literature of the subject. To cope with this unprecedented growth of literature, a ranking list of periodicals in this field has been prepared on the basis of citations in the Annual review of biochemistry for 1968,1969, and 1970. This list is expected to reflect the impact of literature on the progress of biochemical knowledge more accurately than the list prepared by Henkle in 1938. The present list brings out the predominant position of biochemical research in the total scientific effort today, and the increasing bias of cognate disciplines towards biochemical methodologies. A method of analysis of the number of citations in relation to size of the journal concerned and average length of the papers published has been developed and applied in this study. The analysis yields three parameters which should be useful in assessing the actual scientific interest of a journal in relation to the number of papers published, compactness of the information content, and the scientific value of the papers in relation to compactness of presentation.
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION:
Authors: MYERS JOHN M.
Published: January 2008

The objective of this review is to discuss the state of the art at a difficult stage in the development of a subject‐field—when attempts are being made to translate the results of research into operational services of value to practitioners. Judged by the criterion of practical relevance, the application of computers in the law is a subject which, over the past fifteen years, has promised much, but fulfilled little. This is a sweeping generalization—but, as a generalization, it has some justification.
A TEST FOR THE SEPARATION OF RELEVANT AND NON‐RELEVANT DOCUMENTS IN EXPERIMENTAL RETRIEVAL COLLECTIONS
Authors: VAN RIJSBERGEN C.J. , SPARCK JONES K.
Published: January 2008

Many retrieval experiments are intended to discover ways of improving performance, taking the results obtained with some particular technique as a baseline. The fact that substantial alterations to a system often have little or no effect on particular collections is puzzling. This may be due to the initially poor separation of relevant and non‐relevant documents. The paper presents a procedure for characterizing this separation for a collection, which can be used to show whether proposed modifications of the base system are likely to be useful.
A COST SURVEY OF MECHANIZED INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Authors: VICKERS P.H.
Published: January 2008

In the course of the survey covered by this paper, cost data were collected by visiting eighteen operational computer‐based systems in Europe and the U.S.A., using a structured cost analysis scheme. The sample included database producers and self‐contained systems that both create, and provide services from, a data base. From the data obtained, unit costs have been derived for most operations, and the factors contributing to variations in the figures are discussed. Analysis of the data has shown that costs are affected more significantly by factors such as system management, salary variations, and productivity of staff, than by technical factors such as depth of indexing, data preparation methods, or computer programming. The total operating budgets of most of the systems have also been analysed to show the overall pattern of cost distribution, including overheads.
SCIENTISTS, INFORMATION TRANSFER AND LITERATURE CHARACTERISTICS
Authors: BOTTLE R.T.
Published: January 2008

Information transfer among scientists can be regarded as analoguous to a complex rate process highly dependent on the characteristics of the information forms. A general model is presented and an attempt made to quantify certain pathways. Time values are presented for the major stages and certain transmission losses, arising from the condensation of information as it passes from primary to secondary sources, have been calculated. In particular the roles of theses, alerting services and reviews are discussed. A significant fraction of chemical information appears in a thesis before it is republished in a journal paper.
RETRIEVAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE INDEX TO METALS ABSTRACTS
Authors: FARRADANE J. , YATES‐MERCER PENELOPE A.
Published: January 2008

A small‐scale test of Metals abstracts index, with ten profiles and five sections of the abstracts as data base, was carried out with a methodology which endeavoured to simulate real life use of this Index by an information scientist for current awareness searching. The performance results were 67 per cent recall, 40 per cent precision and 2 per cent fallout. An error analysis showed that 65 per cent of the errors were attibutable to human (searcher) factors. Some of the factors that must inevitably affect the assessment of printed indexes are discussed, together with the observation of two unexpected phenomena, namely an apparent relationship between precision and searching effort, and relationships between generality and both recall and fallout.
MEASURING THE GOODNESS OF LIBRARY SERVICES: A GENERAL FRAMEWORK FOR CONSIDERING QUANTITATIVE MEASURES
Authors: ORR R.H.
Published: January 2008

The literature of the last few decades reflects a steadily increasing concern with quantitative assessment of libraries and their services. This concern is both the result of, and a reaction to, growing pressures from within and without the library profession to adopt the tools of the management sciences. The pressures are generated by many factors including the success of these tools in other fields and their adoption by the organizations supporting libraries, the increasingly explicit character of competition for funds at all levels, and the complexity and critical nature of decisions on the host of new options being created by technology and by formalization of library networks.
ON THE SPECIFICATION OF TERM VALUES IN AUTOMATIC INDEXING
Authors: SALTON G. , YANG C.S.
Published: January 2008

The existing practice in automatic indexing is reviewed, and it is shown that the standard theories for the specification of term values (or weights) are not adequate. New techniques are introduced for the assignment of weights to index terms, based on the characteristics of individual document collections. The effectiveness of some of the proposed methods is evaluated.
A THESAURUS‐BASED INDEXING AND CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM DEVELOPED FOR INSPEC PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Authors: HELD B.J.
Published: January 2008

The development of the INSPEC vocabulary system which comprises a unified indexing and classification scheme is described together with the reasons for its adoption. The vocabulary system uses a hierarchical classification and a vocabulary development file with thesaurus structure which is linked to the classification. This file has been designed and is used as a controlled‐language thesaurus and as a free‐language aid in the formulation of search profiles.
TRANSLITERATION IN DOCUMENTATION
Authors: WEINBERG BELLA
Published: January 2008

The validity of transliteration in documentation is questioned in light of the resulting loss of precise information. The process is examined from the linguist's, cataloguer's, and user's points of view. The pros and cons of phonetic transcription vs. scientific transliteration are discussed. Specific problems of several non‐Roman alphabets are touched upon. The author advocates development of non‐Latin print chains for computers used for documentation work. Where the cost of this is prohibitive, scientific transliteration is imperative for the purposes of international documentation. For library purposes, maintenance of separate catalogues for each script is recommended.
BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF A NEW RESEARCH SUB‐FIELD
Authors: MAGYAR G.
Published: January 2008

The published output of a new, small sub‐field of physics—that of dye lasers—is analysed statistically. The yearly growth of publications, the national distribution, the fertility of authors and the number of citations within the subject do not always conform with the known laws of larger fields.
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION
Authors: AUSTIN DEREK
Published: January 2008

Before starting to trace the development of PRECIS to its theoretical beginnings I shall describe the system briefly in its present form. This will serve not only as an introduction for those who are not familiar with the system, but will also help to explain the relevance of some of the historical sections which follow, in which we shall see how a machine‐produced alphabetical indexing system, based on a syntax derived from a study of natural language, developed out of research into principles for a new general classification.
ROBERT ARTHUR FAIRTHORNE
Authors: WALKER PERCY B.
Published: January 2008

Before documentation became his primary interest, Robert Fairthorne would conventionally have been described as an applied mathematician. Such a description, however, does not give a true indication of his special abilities. He is, in fact, dedicated to the task of bringing to science and engineering the benefits of mathematics in all its forms, and to him such classifications as ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ were mere irrelevancies.
THE EVALUATION OF INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS
Authors: FARRADANE J.
Published: January 2008

Methods of testing systems in practice and in theory are critically reviewed. Some new theoretical considerations are advanced.
TOWARDS AUTOMATED MULTI‐DISCIPLINARY INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
Authors: TELL BJÖRN V.
Published: January 2008

The evolutionary process leading to a computerized search facility for giving a current awareness service from a number of magnetic tape services is described. The background for the initiation of the service was a general consensus articulated in a NORDFORSK survey of the reading habits of Scandinavian scientists and engineers, that the individual had the feeling of being flooded with literature. Thus, there was an urgent need for a fast and selective documentation service. One solution to this problem has been to construct and start up a SDI‐service. In order to solve the individual's need for a comprehensive service a variety of data bases are utilized. His interest profile can be up‐dated at any time. The service must handle the bulk of information within a reasonable budget. As a result of the introduction of the SDI‐service thousands of subscribers both in universities and in industry receive printouts relating to their personal interest profiles. Though the service has proved to be a valuable tool both in fundamental research for development work and for current awareness in many fields, the burden put on the libraries for providing photocopies has proved to be a severe obstacle for further development of the service.
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF NATURAL LANGUAGE IN SCIENCE INDEXING AND RETRIEVAL
Authors: BHATTACHARYYA K.
Published: January 2008

This paper examines the implications of the findings of evaluative tests regarding the retrieval performance of natural language in various subject fields. It suggests parallel investigations into the structure of natural language, with particular reference to terminology, as used in the different branches of basic science. The criteria for defining the terminological consistency of a subject are formulated and a measure suggested for determining the degree of terminological consistency.
A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF RETRIEVAL TESTS: A BAYESIAN APPROACH
Authors: ROBERTSON S.E. , TEATHER D.
Published: January 2008

A model is proposed to explain the retrieval characteristics of an IR system. It is assumed that, for a given system and a given question, there are probabilities of retrieving relevant or non‐relevant documents, but that these probabilities are not necessarily the same for different questions. A Bayesian method is outlined for estimating these probabilities, on the basis of a model relating them. The method is applied successfully to some Cranfield data. Potentialities of the method are discussed.
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION
Authors: LINE MAURICE B. , SANDISON A.
Published: January 2008

The term ‘obsolescence’ occurs frequently in the literature of librarianship and information science. In numerous papers we are told how most published literature becomes obsolete within a measurable time, and that an item receives half the uses it will ever receive (‘half‐life’) in a few years. ‘Obsolescence’ is however very rarely defined, and its validity, interest, and practical value are often assumed rather than explained. Before reviewing studies on ‘obsolescence’, therefore, it is necessary to look at the concept and to identify the reasons why it should be of interest.
THE APPLICATION OF BRADFORD'S LAW TO MONOGRAPHS
Authors: WORTHEN DENNIS B.
Published: January 2008

This paper presents an analysis of a sample of the monographs listed in the National Library of Medicine's Current Catalog under subject headings in the cardiovascular diseases category. The sample was composed of 326 publishers and 770 monographs. The sample of monographic literature used in this study conforms to Bradford's law and demonstrates that the law is not confined by political or economic boundaries.
A SAMPLING THEOREM FOR FINITE DISCRETE DISTRIBUTIONS
Authors: BROOKES B.C.
Published: January 2008

There are many phenomena in information science which, when quantified, yield variants of the hyperbolic frequency distribution and are characterized by long straggling tails. Conventional statistical sampling theory offers no general techniques for the confident analysis of finite discrete distributions of this kind. A sampling theorem, based on the binomial probability distribution, but otherwise distribution‐free, is derived and some of its applications are illustrated numerically. One application answers Kendall's question: How many additional periodicals would be found on doubling the period of publication within which periodicals contributing to a specified topic are enumerated? The effects of sampling truncated distributions are also briefly discussed.
SPATIAL AND TYPOGRAPHIC CODING IN PRINTED BIBLIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS
Authors: SPENCER H. , REYNOLDS L. , COE B.
Published: January 2008

Bibliographical materials are often produced on a low budget and against a deadline, and the design of the material often does not adequately represent the structure of the information or facilitate its use. Two studies concerned with optimizing the effectiveness of design given certain practical constraints are reported here. In the first study, ten coding systems suitable for distinguishing between entries in typewritten bibliographies were tested. Subjects were given sections of author index typed in different styles, together with lists of authors' surnames to be found in the test material within a set time. The most effective system made a clear distinction between entries, and between the first element of each entry and the rest of the entry, by indentation. In the second study, the effectiveness of six spatial and three typographic coding systems for distinguishing between entries and between elements within entries in typeset bibliographies was tested for two different search tasks. In Experiment I, subjects were given lists of authors' surnames to find in the test material; in Experiment 2 they were given lists of titles. Spatial coding was more effective than typographic coding in Experiment 1; the reverse was true for Experiment 2. The most effective spatial coding systems in both experiments were those which clearly distinguished the start of each entry by line spacing or indentation. The use of capitals for authors' surnames was the most effective typographic coding system in Experiment 1; the use of bold for titles was the most effective in Experiment 2. The best compromise for both search tasks is likely to incorporate line spacing between entries with elements within entries running on, and bold titles.
COMPUTER‐BASED CURRENT AWARENESS SERVICES
Authors: LEGGATE P.
Published: January 2008

Mountbatten offers a vivid description of the current‐awareness function using the analogy of a very wide conveyor‐belt, representing the information publishers, on which books, periodicals and reports appear at random: ‘The searcher is on a platform just above the belt and as the information material passes underneath he can pick up and read anything that he thinks might be of interest to him. You can imagine his frustration as he realises that for every item he takes time to examine, hundreds of others of possible interest to him have passed by’. Personality and environment will determine whether the individual can find an intelligent compromise between the extremes of neurosis induced by worrying about the material he is missing, or complacency with any system which produces one or two interesting items.