Search

A teaching strategy has been developed for showing business and technical writing students how to write abstracts. The strategy contains six steps: (1) explain the importance of abstracts; (2) define summary and descriptive abstracts; (3) give students general guidelines for preparing abstracts; (4) explain topic and sentence outlines, showing the relationship between the two kinds of outlines and the two kinds of abstracts; (5) use an inclass assignment to give students practice writing abstracts; and (6) make appropriate followup assignments. This method of approaching abstracts will give students the basics and prepare them for writing abstracts in professional situations. (RL)

The first volume in a series of publications describing the basic documentation practices involved in the initial setting up and subsequent operation of an information-library organization to provide defense-aerospace scientific and technical information services, this manual consists of three sections. "Acquisition and Sources," by Philip Eckert, offers suggestions and ideas for acquiring documents or their surrogates and dealing with problems in selection and duplicate checking. A semiautomated duplicate search technique and alerting methods for prospective documentation are described. Appendices include two category systems, selected definitions and acronyms, and a selected address list for document procurement. "Descriptive Cataloging," by Barbara Gladd and others, defines the functions and purposes of descriptive cataloging in processing technical reports and compares the merits of manual vs. automated systems. Descriptive data elements and guidelines for their use in implementing a system already automated or to be automated in the future are presented, and personnel and staffing considerations are discussed. "Abstracting and Subject Analysis," by Toni Carbo Bearman, summarizes and provides an overview of the practical aspects of abstracting, indexing, thesaurus development, and the use of computers in abstracting and indexing. References to relevant standards are included. (Author/RAA)

This chapter describes how ERIC addresses the problems resulting from four conditions that make it unique in the indexing field: (1) its subject area includes a wide range of subspecialists; (2) its clientele is extremely diverse; (3) it has a dual retrieval purpose--for both manual and computer access; and (4) its retrieval is challenged by the inexact language of the social sciences. Since these problems also affect the way ERIC is organized, discussion focuses first on ERIC's functions, activities, and structure. The types of indexes and other products and services it provides are then discussed, and indexing guidelines and aids are described in detail to show not only how the information system coordinates its indexing process, but also how that process affects retrieval. The concluding section describes quality control in ERIC in terms of vocabulary maintenance procedures. Appendices include a listing of the ERIC Clearinghouses with descriptions of their areas of specialization; sample displays from the print indexes; sample ERIC descriptors representing population concepts; sample publication types and their codes; and sample descriptor group codes. (BBM)

Updating a 1968 publication, this document presents rules and explanatory comments for use by authors and editors involved in the preparation of a scientific manuscript for professional typesetting prior to publication. It is noted that the guidelines should also be useful for authors producing camera-ready typescript with word processing techniques. Two categories of papers (original scientific and review papers) are identified, and the abstracting and indexing of primary publications is mentioned. It is noted that manuscripts should not be submitted for duplicate publication or duplicate consideration for publication. The component parts of a manuscript are identified as the title, abstract, keywords, main text, summary, and reference list; and brief guidelines on the production of these sections are given. Further guidelines cover style of presentation, citations and bibliographical references, bibliographical identification of serials, preparation of the author's abstract, use and explanation of new terminology and nomenclature, preparation of tables and illustrations, and the physical form of manuscripts for submission. Additional recommendations to editors and a list of international standards concerned with scientific publications are also provided. (ESR)

This manual details the procedures and guidelines that the staff of the Non-Formal Education (NFE) Information Center use in preparing citations and annotations for the "The NFE Exchange" and an NFE series of annotated bibliographies. Following a brief description of the purpose of an NFE bibliography, sample basic formats are provided for the citation of a book, pamphlet, or report, and the citation of an article or section from a larger publication. Variations from the basic formats are then presented, with examples from NFE bibliographies. Author, periodical title, article, chapter, and other variations are covered, as well as the addition of language information and other information of value. Guidelines for and examples of the composition of annotations are also provided, covering general points to remember, the general format, and formats for specific types of documents, including project reports and case studies, theoretical documents, theoretical discussions with specific examples of activities, special issues and single articles in journals and newsletters, a number of articles from one journal or newsletter, seminar and conference reports, collections of papers, manuals and handbooks, bibliographies, and directories or surveys of programs. A list of staff members of the NFE Information Center from 1976 to 1983 concludes the manual. (ESR)

These reports and papers from a training course which brought together information services professionals from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Botswana, and Swaziland address the following topics: (1) information systems analysis; (2) the state of the art in bibliographic control in Eastern and Southern Africa; (3) collection development; (4) descriptive cataloging; (5) information retrieval systems (with special reference to indexing); (6) abstracts and abstracting; (7) user education; (8) current awareness services and selective dissemination of information; (9) effective communication skills for librarians; (10) user needs analysis; (11) the role of librarians in research; (12) research methodology; (13) library equipment requirements; (14) budgeting and budgetary control; (15) an overview of the National Information Service initiative; and (16) a description of the Kagera Basin Organization (KBO) Documentation Center. Appended are action plans for developing national information systems in Uganda and Tanzania, lists of course participants and resource persons, and the course schedule. (GL)

This manual resulted from the work of the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) and the International Information Centre for Terminology (Infoterm) in Vienna in developing methodologies for the work of multilingual organizations. Three papers are included in the document: "A Method for Controlled Concept Dynamics: Comprehensive Proposal for Project-related Terminology Work" (Felber, Galinski, Nedobity); "Manual for Multilingual Abstracting: A Method for Content Analysis" (Nedobity); and "Bibliography of Specialized Vocabularies in the Field of Vocational Training" (Nedobity, Budin). The Universal Decimal Classification is used to classify 246 vocabularies. The second section lists these titles alphabetically, and the third section is a classified listing of an additional 212 "incomplete" entries. (CML)