Measurement of How Well Professional People Keep Up With Their Technical Literature.

The article discusses how well professionally trained people keep up with their technical literature. Variations in individual capabilities such as reading speed, searching skill, language facility, and variations in access to documents or translations can account for only relatively minor differences among individuals in what percentage they actually read of the outpourings of the technical presses. Differences in subject fields must account for more of the range of response. Despite assurance of ability to keep up, there remains need to detail, for the sake of those who can use the information, exactly how those who actually keep up have solved the problems of multiple languages, access to documents, and reading or skimming of very large numbers of documents.