Search

The article presents information on the use of a type of matrix to analyze citations of scientific papers. Scientific papers have a series of citations belonging to the previous literature. It is possible to investigate the internal connections among papers in a group, whose papers are frequently cited by themselves, by examining their citations. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the measurements by which the internal connections of a group of scientific papers are measured. The techniques of using the type of matrix is further developed to carry out the analysis of a certain type of group of scientific papers.

Frequencies of the number of references per paper were obtained for the information science literature represented by ail papers cited in Information Science Abstracts, volumes 1-6 11966-1971). Almost one-third of the papers had no references. Half of them had four references or fewer; two-thirds had eight or fewer references. The ratio of papers without references to those with references was proposed as a measure of the scholarly status of a field. On this basis, information science was found to be less scholarly than pharmacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to measure the scientific productivity in terms of number of papers published in journals by authors in the field of information science, compared to the publication pattern for science in general. Information science has been defined by the American Society for Information Science as the science that investigates the properties and behavior of information, the forces governing the flow of information, and the means of processing information, for optimum accessibility and usability. According to this definition, information science emerges as an umbrella-like discipline. If the basic professional society in this discipline is considered to be the American Society for Information Science, then its prime indexing journal may be considered to be "Information Science Abstracts," and its prime review vehicle may be the "Annual Review of Information Science and Technology."

Discussions relating to the identification of courses and the development of curricula for the information- science field cannot yield meaningful results unless the conceptual framework of the field is first delimited and its basic segments defined. Starting with the current ASIS definition of information science, an analysis is made of the rationale of current thinking relevant to the conceptual boundaries and intellectual content of the field. Information science is analyzed to be comprised of the segments of: (1) Conceptualization, (2) Storage/Transmission, and (3) Utilization. Two of the segments are shown to be based on subjective notions, which can be investigated, for the most part, through the employment of statistical and normative survey methodology. One of the segments is shown to be susceptible of the application of more rigorous research methodology capable of yielding empirical proof. Since all three segments form integral parts of the field, they need to be fully represented in the information science curriculum. The technologist as well as the humanist can make significant contributions to the growth and development of the information-science field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is the purpose of this paper to explore the use of extracts by reporting the results of a survey of the current acceptability and use of extracts, by a literature review and by suggesting guidelines for selecting extract material. The survey shows that extracts are currently being used in information services, especially for current awareness. Most consider extracting a time-saver. The methods for selecting material from a document are not well defined. A search of the literature produced only thirteen documents which deal with manually produced extracts. As reported in the literature, materials extracted include the author summaries, first and/or last paragraphs, selected sentences, the first page, and material selected by subject specialists from the entire text. The value of extracts as measured by whether they lead the user to relevant documents was experimentally demonstrated. The purpose of the guidelines is to help the librarian and information specialist produce an informative extract. There was no substantial evidence that extracting is less costly than abstracting. The main criteria considers whether to spend the money to resay what the author has said or get a better understanding of the paper and use the author's words to describe it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of research papers on subject and linguistic analysis in information science. In the paper "Study of Theories and Models of Information Storage and Retrieval: Report No. 7: Graphs and Algorithms for Term Relations," an algorithm is presented for grouping the terms of a document corpus into genera, and it is shown that the different genera of the graph G = (T, M), where T is the set of index terms and M the reflexive, symmetrical relation of matching, constitute a partition of T. In "All Evaluation of Links and Roles Used in Information Retrieval," links and roles are techniques for modifying a basic coordinate indexing method.

The article focuses on several papers providing information on the application of equipment to library operations. The paper "The Economics of Book Catalog Production: A Study Prepared for Stanford University Libraries and the Council on Library Resources," by R.M. Hayes and R.M. Shoffner was intended to assist Stanford University in the economic and procedural questions involved in deciding what form the catalog for a new undergraduate library should take. It is also expected to assist other libraries in making such a decision.

The impetus for the work described in this paper arose from observations reported in a letter to the Editor of this Journal (1). The sense of that letter was that those of us who have worked in the field now broadly called Computer and Information Science, have depended too long on the use of terms defined by example or through the vague specification of relationships (often weak) among entities. The term to which the author of the letter made specific reference (a term to which altogether too many interpretations are allied) was "thesaurus." The reader will find that the term "thesaurus" is not defined in this paper but, as will be seen, a number of more basic terms have been selected as the starting point for a project of defining terms which are important in communicating about computer and information science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on maintenance and reduction of documents. The aim of the article is to present the major problems of maintenance, problems which are inherent in any document collection, problems whose existence alone gives reason to this discussion. The article also enumerates some of the major problems of reduction, and finally, to suggest some possible solution for at least a part of the numerous problems that inevitably accompany work in this field. Maintenance of a collection is concerned primarily with the document in its original form, usually paper, with graphs, supplements, revisions, addenda, changes, and sometimes a multitude of after thoughts.

It is pointed out that if information science is to be considered a "true" science similar to physics or chemistry then it must have a set of concepts and analytical expressions which apply to the flow of information in a general way. Such expressions should be relatively independent of the particular context or application under consideration. Definitions of a rigorous nature for the fundamental quantities involved must be established. These must have general applicability and must be related to other known and measurable quantities. It is desirable also that they be capable of quantification. In several previous papers, the author and a colleague have described a model of a generalized information system which has wide, and perhaps universal applicability. This paper elaborates on this model and indicates the range of its applicability. Several fundamental quantities are defined specifically in a way which allows for quantification. It is pointed out in this paper that this model can be the basis for the development of a "true" science of information with all of the necessary requirements for a science. By the use of this model and the definition of a "true" science, the goals and requirements for a curriculum in information science are thus established. Various applications of information science must then exist in much the same way that many applications of physics exist. In the latter case, the applications usually give rise to various branches of engineering. In the case of information science, one of the applications is librarianship-although many others exist as well. Some of these are referred to in the paper. In particular, science information as a subset of information science is discussed. Within this context, information is defined as data of value in decision making. Quantitative measures of information can be obtained by relating information to specific observable actions which can be measured physically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disagreements about the relevance of documents to retrieval requests occur because relevance judges differently interpret requests or documents. Requests may be differently interpreted because they are unclear. Well-known types of request obscurity are reviewed. Less well known is that a request may be unclear because its form-"documents about subject S," "documents answering question Q," etc.-is unclear. Explications are developed of the meanings of the request forms just given and several others. A request of any of the forms discussed is interpreted to be for documents which support statements of a specified kind in a specified way. For example, an "about S' request requires documents supporting statements which contain expression S (though several qualifications are needed); a "question Q" request requires documents which support answers to Q. Examples are given which suggest that some, perhaps all, "about S" requests are unclear. Some ways of formulating clear question requests are given. Various ways in which documents may support statements are distinguished. These depend on such factors as parts of a document used, inference strength, and background knowledge permitted. Some possibly clear support specifications are indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on several research papers which focus on characteristics of information resources. The paper "Documentation and Dissemination of Research and Development Results" deals with federal scientific and technical information programs, their efforts to achieve efficacy and timeliness, their present scope, prevailing practices, access to and utilization of foreign information, problems that face them, and proposals for dealing with them. Another paper is "Some Prerequisites to Cooperative Cataloging." There is an urgent need for a co-operative cataloguing centre to process current non-American materials. Two alternatives have been suggested: centralized cataloguing, in which libraries would forward acquisitions to the centre for cataloguing; and co-ordinated cataloguing, whereby the centre would act as a clearing-house receiving and distributing requests for cataloguing to be performed by the library first acquiring a given item.

The article presents information on several research papers on documentation. The paper "Manpower for Technical Information Work" presents the findings and conclusions of a pilot study of the functions and qualifications of technical information support personnel in the communications equipment industry. Another paper is "Swimming Against the Flood of Literature," by P.L. Broadhurst. The coverage of all the literature of a given science by one abstract journal and the formation of large computer-searched central stores of information are ideas that are unlikely to be implemented on a large scale in our lifetime.

The article presents information on coordinate indexing. There are many facets to information retrieval. One of these is the scope which any particular information system is expected to encompass. Several years ago, the Technical Department of the Titanium Division of the National Lead Co. realized the need for more efficient methods of retrieving internal information. The index schedules were organized into a classification system based on Colon principles. The completed classification was coded, using combinations of capital and small letters, and Arabic numerals, to obtain maximum flexibility.

The article focuses on several case studies of mechanized systems of documentation. The paper "IBM 1401 Computer Produced and Maintained Weapon Data Subject Authority Document," by James H. Kennedy describes a rapid print-out method for updating a constantly changing authority file. Economical even if more than ten original copies are made. Checking headings, keypunching and editing tapes are performed by humans but card and printed catalog production is by machine. The paper "Computer Search of the U.S. Chemical Patent Literature," by Paul W. Howerton appeared in the 1963 issue of the journal " Automation and Scientific Communication."

This paper considers the optimal storage of books by size in libraries. A network model is developed to determine the optimum number of shelf heights to use which will minimize the shelving cost for a given collection of books. The model is analyzed and solved by a well known operations research technique of finding the shortest path in a directed network. Results of an experimental study to apply this model to a sample collection of books from the Purdue University Library are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses several papers on library science and documentation. The paper "Facsimile for Federal Libraries," by Scott Adams, published in the June 1953 issue of the journal "Special Libraries," discusses the facsimile equipment for use by the AEC, developed by RCA. The purpose of the paper "The Communication of Information (An Historical Review)," by Cherry E. Colin is to illustrate the early historical origins of theoretical work in the field Of communication, but with little use of mathematical notation, and to show the relationships between the diverse interpretations of the word "communication."

In this article the author remarks states that motion pictures are often treated as if they had been admitted into the record family by some accident. They do not fall properly into place in any conventional classification scheme. The accepted guidelines and ground-terms applicable to orthodox record materials and in records administration programs cannot be adapted to them without radical modification. There are some valuable papers concerning some technical aspects of motion picture storage and preservation, and a piece or two which deal with the characteristics of motion picture records from the standpoint of the researcher in history.

The article presents some pieces of news related to documentation. One piece of news informs that out-of-print material can be reprinted as a business proposition only if sufficient demand exists. Another piece of news informs that documentation industry firm Rcadex Microprint Corp. has established its plant in Chester, Vermont and maintains an office at 1 Madison Avenue, New York City. Work is continuing on the production of the British Sessional Papers and other titles which will shortly be announced.

Technical information centers have been established in recent years to cope with the "information explosion" problem which confronts the scientific community. These operations are highly analogous to a typical manufacturing firm with functions such as purchasing, production, service, finance, administration, and distribution. Management of a center encounters cost information requirements similar to those found in other enterprises for planning, control, and decision-making purposes. Yet, research indicates that few tangible cost-accounting applications have been attempted in information centers. The purpose of this paper is to describe a research project conducted at a technical information center to test the hypothesis that: A theoretically-sound managerial cost-accounting system con be designed to meet the specific characteristics of a technical information center by revising and innovating systems utilized by other enterprises. A computerized cost system was developed and operated for a three-month period to test this hypothesis. The results of the study indicate that effective managerial cost accounting is possible for o technical information center. Relevant cost information was generated periodically to measure the operating performance of the center's production process. A summary of the data that were reported regularly to management is presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(I) Better understanding of subject document retrieval might result if different functions of subject document retrieval systems are studied separately. This paper is concerned with retrieval of documents, in response to a question, from which answers to that question can be inferred ("answer-providing documents"). "Answer can be inferred from document" has many possible meanings, one of which must be selected (an "inference specification"). Inasmuch as scientists in a field sometimes disagree about the correctness of inferences, have somewhat different background knowledge, etc., any inference specification can only approximate scientific inference practices. Two sources of systematic knowledge of document-statement inference practices in a scientific field are described. (II) If a content word occurs in a question, then it occurs in any answer to that question (with some apparently tractable exceptions). An indexing procedure based on that fact is described which would permit retrieval of all answer-providing documents for a question. However, because the indexing is "nonrelational," it could cause false retrievals as well. Various ways of dealing with such false retrievals are briefly indicated, and a study is sketched that would provide data for helping selection among them. Two special points concerning indexing for retrieval of answer-providing documents are discussed separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous applications of simulation to information storage and retrieval systems (ISRS) have been overly restrictive in their scope and have failed to consider the environment within which such systems operate. This paper considers the ISRS as a subsystem within a larger system which includes the users and the funders ot the retrieval system. The three components form a closed-loop information feedback system in which user response influences both the funding and operation of the ISRS as it attempts to satisfy user needs within a finite budget allocation. Reward-cost theory provides the bask for describing user behavior. An industrial dynamics model has been developed to simulate ISRS/user/funder behavior where a university departmental library is the ISRS component. The results which such an analysis can produce are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A KWIC Cumulative Index to the first 53 years of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America has been produced and distributed to the members of the Society. There are only about 1,000 members of this group. This paper reports the reactions of this group of scientists to the novel index. Temporal variation of the preference is studied both as a simple Markov process and as a birth and death model. The findings are extrapolated to predict the stable level of preference. By the birth and death model, about 75% of the respondents would eventually prefer the KWIC index over the traditional subject index. Authors provided a large percentage of the respondents so they were treated separately. About 80% of the authors would eventually prefer the KWIC index, assuming no change in the environment. The simple Markov process gave slightly lower values. Because of the rapid change in information retrieval techniques, these results may not remain valid very long, nor for groups in different environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on literary work related to information science. The article "Aid-to-Indexing Forms: Progress Report No. 2.," is a report of the experience gained in using aid-to-indexing forms received from authors of over 2,000 papers which appeared in six physics research journals. Another article "Citations of Physics Literature," by Ben-Ami Lipetz and Charlotte F. Dziurkiewicz, was prepared as part of a program to evaluate the potential usefulness of the citation index as a reference aid for physicists. It is hoped that it will prove useful in helping American physicists to find relevant Russian work.

The scale of activity in Information Science and Retrieval, unique in the twentieth century, is plotted by surveying three areas of impingement between professional people and information systems. The first testimony cites the momentum in a major scientific society with respect to the reorganization and automation of publication and retrieval. The second projects the state of the art in the time-sharing of computer programs and files to the degree that the exchange of information is becoming a completely economic and critical tool for education, with man-machine interfaces provided for students and professors alike. The third deals with the rapid progress in the realization of man-interface conversation in nearly natural English format, made possible by sophisticated programs and hardware. The prognostication of the impact of these increasing capabilities on the deepest concerns and activities of mankind is sketched. The immediate availability throughout the world of all information files will engender continual review and evaluation in the scientific spirit that welcomes reexamination of any data without fear. In liberal education, there must be a responsibility to prepare minds for this regimen in the world of scholarship of the 1970's, but there must be a concomitant exhilaration of the young human spirit in the seeking of the total view and of a value system for the individuality in the universe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work is presented as a challenge paper for a symposium on education for information science to be held by the American Documentation Institute in September, 1965. The paper suggests that both searching for information in a collection of stored messages and searching for information in the process of education have been subject to and shaped by one basic constraint-the very limited rates of flow of information into human sense channels, it is shown How information retrieval and education each have surmounted the same difficulty in the same way, by many-1 homomorphic transformations on messages which greatly reduce their word (or bit) content while preserving certain minimum invariants which identify the messages. From the homomorphic reductions, sensing time has been reduced further by means of the equivalence classes derived from the "vocabularies" in which the reduced messages are recoded. A quantitative partial model of information retrieval (to be presented in greater detail elsewhere) is suggested as homomorphic with education. Some possible applications to education in general and education for information science in particular ore discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on experiments with a statistical technique that can be used to compute word associations useful for document retrieval purposes in a collection where documents are described by index words occurring in the text or in abstracts of the documents. A number of alternative methods that have been proposed for computing word associations appear to present intractable computation problems that will deter large scale application. The limited experiments described in the paper indicate the potential utility of clumping techniques as a basis for large-scale associative document retrieval.

The article focuses on problems related to information classification and presents information on a Classification Research Group that has been England. The importance of classification to documentation in general and to the new field of machine literature searching in particular is becoming increasingly apparent.

The article reports that the Italian National Information Institute attracted two cabinet ministers, an undersecretary, and one hundred foreign documentalists and an equal number of their countrymen to their International Conference on Training for Information Work that held at Rome, Italy during November 15-19, 1971. The Conference had been billed as being under the sponsorship of the International Federation for Documentation. It was clear from the conference's beginning that the Italian hosts hungered for recommendations to present to their governmental superiors.

The article presents a list of research papers on some proposed facilities other information centers related to information science. "A Retrieval System for Searching Defense Documentation Center Magnetic Tape Files," states that a document retrieval system was developed with the cooperation of the Defense Documentation Center. This report describes the logic of the computer program developed, and provides instructions for use of the program. "USAF Mechanical Properties Data Center," cover the continued operation of the U.S.A.F. Mechanical Properties Data Center, including the expansion of data files, capabilities, and data output.

Throughout my years of work as an information scientist I have been plagued by a personal and professional sense of doubt with respect to the field. A central theme of every conference that I have attended related to: "What is information science?" Or "Is information science a science?" In this paper I hope to take these questions head on. I must begin by saying that I do take information science seriously as a science. I see it as the quest for understanding of the nature of information and man's interaction with it. That we lack so much in this quest for understanding is the greatest challenge of the science. I intend to explore the tradition, or world view, bearing on the scientific study of information. The currently prevalent world view is the scientific tradition which extends from the Enlightenment to the present. I also intend to look critically at what I perceive to be the premises underlying most of our current efforts to understand the phenomenon of information. The criticism will by necessity be speculative. I intend to stick my neck out, not because I can prove my assertions, but because I believe these ideas must be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the possible availability of interdisciplinary abstracts on magnetic tape. During the past few years there has been increasing emphasis on the machine abstracting and indexing of raw natural language, the exchange of information in processed form between information centers, and the use of large computers in working information retrieval systems. The principal condition imposed upon borrowers of the tape would be that they come back perhaps a year later and tell people what they have done with it. If enough interesting papers show up one might want to hold a symposium at any rate, and researchers will want to issue a report showing the cost and practicality of this experiment.

The interrelationships of the branches of the sciences and technology are analyzed by means of linkages derived from the listing of journals under more than one subject category in the list "Source Journals Arranged by Category" from the Science Citation Index 1970. These subject categories are then grouped together on the basis of the Dewey Decimal Classification in order that the broader fields of science and technology might also be analyzed. Both the nature and the strength of the linkages are considered. It is concluded that both intuitively and in comparison with a previous paper on the subject in which the data was derived by means of citation analysis the findings are of sufficient validity and interest to warrant further investigation using a more precisely constructed subject category listing. Implications are seen for collection development and for collection organization and classification in libraries and other information centers concerned with the subject areas of science and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents brief communication about research papers on information science. The first paper provides a checklist for information environment and the factors which must be considered in comparing information systems. Another paper highlights the technique for monitoring user behavior in any online indexing or retrieval system. According to the paper, it has long been useful for system designers to monitor user behavior automatically by retaining transcripts or user/system dialogs and also compiling statistics.

On November 11, 1971, the Special Interest Group of the American Society for Information Science on Behavioral and Social Sciences held a panel discussion at the annual meeting in Denver. The audience found the ideas generated of sufficient importance to request that the highlights be published and disseminated to policy makers and other key people. In this paper, Robin Crickman¹ has summarized the statements of the five panelists. The primary message from these and other comments made during the panel discussion was the need to probe more deeply into the utility of knowledge for decision-making, to shift priorities toward making data more usable to policy-makers than to collectors and disseminators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an experimental study of index-term frequency as a factor in retrieval performance. The frequency of an Index term, or its "breadth" as it is called here. Is the number of postings made to the term in a given collection. The question is asked: Of index terms assigned to documents, which function most effectively in retrieval, the most used or popular terms, or those which are used relatively infrequently? The experiment is a retrieval experiment and uses the Cranfield- Salton data. Breadth of indexing is varied by nonrandomly deleting terms from documents. Retrieval output is evaluated using the Expected Search Length measure of retrieval effectiveness as well as the usual precision and recall. The Wilcoxen Test is used to determine the statistical significance of the different indexings. The results show that the "optimal" breadth of indexing is a variable, depending on user needs: if a few documents are wanted or high precision is desired, then narrow terms are more effective than broad ones; if, on the other hand, all or most relevant documents are wanted, then broad terms are better. An argument, however, can be made for the quality of narrow terms, since when these terms are deleted precision never improves, whereas deleting broad terms always results in higher precision. A corollary experiment is carried out to compare two indexings of the same average breadth where one indexing consists of semantically appropriate terms-terms taken from the document title-and the other consists of merely "reasonable" index terms. The results suggest that title-term indexing is qualifiedly superior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequently it is useful to abbreviate or otherwise transform keys used for the retrieval of information. These transformations include the compression of long keys into a fixed field length by operations on characters or groups of characters, hash or random transformations in order to obtain a direct address, or phonetic coding to order to group together keys that are in some way similar. The various transformations have differing effects on file retrieval schemes. Given a transformation algorithm and data to be transformed, it is possible to characterize certain qualities of the algorithm that re late to retrieval problems. This paper is concerned with some measures of effectiveness of such transformation algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt was made to assess the potential use of holography in information storage and retrieval systems. Various scientific (physics), engineering, and business indexes were searched as well as those dealing with information science and libraries. A great many articles were found in the first three, all of which indicate the vast amount of interest, research, and development in the field, and lead to the conclusion that holography is one of the most promising methods now under research for the achievement of high bulk storage with fast random access at a reasonable cost. Be- cause such a method implies a far greater than present ability to store, access, and transmit information on the part of information centers and libraries, and because little has been written in their literature, this paper has been prepared as a "state of the art" to provide back- ground knowledge which is expected to be useful to many in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the idea of constructing a keyword classification for retrieval purposes automatically is not a new one, comparatively few systematic experiments have been carried out in this area, and while many suggestions have been put forward, not enough is known about the behaviour of automatic keyword classWucations, and hence about the properties such classifications should have and the ways they should be used. In previous experiments we showed that some forms of classification could give good results, and this paper describes a further series of tests designed to examine this sort of classification in more detail, with a view to establishing the optimum forms of classification and procedures for using them in different retrieval situations. These tests demonstrate that further improvements in performance over that for unclassified keywords can be obtained, and that definite conclusions con be drawn about the correct approach to classification for collections like the test one: the best results are given when grouping is confined to strongly connected, non- frequent keywords, when the classification is used to provide additional rather than alternative indexing terms, particularly for requests, and when matching is controlled by keyword collection frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarizes the results of a comparison of the coverage of "Literature Notes" with that of other services. The results reported here are indicative of the variations in coverage among the services and give some idea of the total extent of the literature. These variations result in part from differences in the scope of the services: Chemical Literature includes some items of interest solely to chemists that the other services would consider too specialized to include, such as detailed discussions of chemical nomenclature, and Library Science Abstracts.

The article presents a bibliography of documentation which appears regularly in the journal American Documentation. One of the notes on documentation provides that the storage of information in the form of reproducible electronic signals plays an important part in the fields of communication, education, business, industry, and manufacturing. The electronic recording of audio signals for electronic reproduction at any convenient and subsequent time, as exemplified by the phonograph and sound motion picture, plays an important role in the dissemination of information, art, and culture. There are many different means for the storage and reproduction of information in the form of electronic signals.

The article presents a bibliography of documentation which appears regularly in the journal "American Documentation." One of the notes provides that the Division of Biological Sciences of the National Science Foundation, for administrative purposes, has departed from conventional terminology, such as biochemistry, biophysics and physiology, in its system for grouping research projects into categories. For this purpose, biological sciences have been divided into areas covering the full spectrum of biology with the molecule at one extreme and the psyche at the other.

The article discusses about the documentation problems. The ultimate purpose of documentation is to make available a particular bit of information to the person who needs it. Documentation has to do with the communication of information and knowledge across the barriers of time and distance. Such communication may be in any of several media, for example, film, sound recording, the printed page, or microreproduction. One assumption, however, is that records are kept. Thus the telephone would not ordinarily be thought of as a documentation instrument.

The article presents a collection of bibliographical notes on and abstracts of books and articles pertaining to various aspects of the organization of information is the sixth installment of the bibliography compiled cooperatively by the Committee on Organization of Information of the American Documentation Institute. "Abstracts of Corrosion Literature" published in the April 1951 issue of "Science," will be printed by the National Association of Corrosion Engineers on punch cards to reduce time needed to search literature for information. "The Association of Research Libraries Committee on National Needs," an article from the Library of Congress Information Bulletin, provides information on the committee, which was established recently to consider the adequacy of national resources of research materials in terms of the content, growth, organization and bibliographical control of library collections as those collections may be called upon to serve critical national needs in the present and in the future.

Highlights of the history of the American Documentation Institute (ADI) (1937-1967) are sketched, giving background on the concepts and aspirations of Watson Davis (1896-1967), founder of ADI and one of the first Americans to become interested in documentation as a separate field of endeavor. Davis organized ADI as a service organization, concentrating primarily on offering microfilming services. Since 1952 ADI has grown in importance as a professional organization, gradually developing to a state of financial self-sufficiency, intellectual influence, and benefaction to its members. These developments are traced for the most part in chronologial order, sometimes with the use of footnotes to bring up to date matters introduced in the text at the time of their earliest importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All of the phenomena of the field of documentation may be classified under the notions of the three forms of: material, ideational, and energy. It is suggested that the phenomenological method may be advantageously applied to documentation in conjunction with the methods of speculative philosophy. Examples are offered to illustrate how such methods may illuminate some of the more fundamental problem areas of the field, such as the problems of identification and "information" by yielding operational definitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze different types of classification systems characterized by different types of subjects. The most important types of subjects in documentation are documents and terms, but other systems for other subjects are discussed. Systems of science are dealt with as an introduction to document systems. Every system ought to have a structure that will fit the subjects. The hierarchies for documents and terms are not the same. if we try to classify a category of subjects in a system made for another category of subjects (for example, classifying terms or technical products according to a document system) we will always meet with difficulties. We should not be bound for the future to now existing systems, but for each type of subject we have to create the best possible system or variant. Our aim should be to get a system of systems, where every individual system as far as possible-without distortion of its primary function-has common features with the other systems. Principles for designing a modern universal document system based on concepts and adapted to technology and a universal term system are advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information activities received considerable attention during 1964, The main efforts were stimulated by a concern that R & D results are not adequately disseminated. This paper discusses some of these activities in the academic, governmental, and industrial areas; reviews documentation R & D as given in the National Science Foundation Document, NSF-64-17, Current Research and Development in Scientific Documentation No. 13 (which covers approximately Fiscal Year 1963); and lists some trends observed by the Committee on the Organization of Information (COI). Brief comments are also provided on some international activities that occurred in 1964. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of research papers describing characteristics of information resources. The report "Characteristics of Scientific Journals, 1949-1959: Report of a Survey Conducted by the Office of Science Information Service," of a survey on the characteristics of scientific journals, Nat'l Science Foundation, represents an attempt to collect certain pertinent data on the primary research journals of the United States. The report "A Model Information Retrieval Network for Government, Science and Industry: A Proposed Basic Configuration for a National System of Interlinking Information Retrieval Networks," describes the technical, organizational and financial aspects of a model Information Retrieval Network which could be made operational at the present time.

The article reports that an associative searching technique has been developed for the automatic storage and retrieval of natural language message information. A user may employ his own vocabulary in formulating a typewritten request and the technique allows the machine to find relevant information even when there is no direct matching of vocabulary items. The method thus lends itself to ready interaction between computer and user. Answers are based on the network of associations implicit in the stored message data, and items are outputted in order of decreasing relevance to the question.