SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION AND ITS USERS

Abstract

I am very conscious of speaking to you as an outsider. All of you here are professional people involved in the handling of information. You cover the whole process—the collecting, the storing, the finding, and the handing out of information. I come in at both ends of the process, as a provider of information and as a user of information. Now when I say a user of information, I am very tempted, as all working scientists are tempted, to think that because I am a user I can tell the information people exactly what they ought to do. If I resist the temptation it is because I know that I am only a user. I am not a typical user, I am not an average user: I cannot say that my studies in the use of scientific information, which began long before the Royal Society Conference of 1947, entitle me to speak with any authority. Nevertheless, what I do say is this: instead of or as well as myself you should consider a whole series of differently graded users and between them they would represent the people to whom you are giving your services.

Citation

BERNAL, J.D. (1960), "SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION AND ITS USERS", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 12 No. 12, pp. 432-438. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb049779