Search results

The search for an easily installed, practicable and inexpensive information retrieval system continues unabated. This is reflected in the Aslib Library almost daily by requests for advice on the feasibility of installing this or that system, or for information on what systems are available in Great Britain. Study of the following bibliography, which covers only a narrow selection of information retrieval systems, will reveal that much original thought has been producing concrete results in this country. In fact, one of the earliest references is to a paper given at the twenty‐second Aslib Conference in 1947 by W. E. Batten, in which he describes his development of an ‘aspect’ card system—more often referred to today as ‘Peek‐a‐boo’ or ‘feature’ cards. Mr C. W. Cleverdon's Cranfield project is also adding considerable knowledge on the use of various indexing methods, including Uniterm.

The Institution of Chemical Engineers sponsored this series of lectures on the information programmes of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Engineers Joint Council, and other organizations of interest to those in science and technology. The Institution has been interested in these developments and wants to assess what role it should play in the processing of technical information. From the trends of these organizations and from the developments in equipment and microforms patterns are emerging which will help the information officer in his work.

IThis review has been sponsored by the Office for Scientific and Technical Information and the end product of the complete research will be a thesaurus of management terms. Parallel research in the business management area and also supported by OSTI is being conducted by David Dews, Librarian of the Manchester Business School, and K. D. C. Vernon, Librarian of the London Graduate School of Business Studies. As Mr Vernon is at present engaged in the construction of a faceted classification scheme for management, this investigation has concentrated on the possibility of utilizing faceted techniques to construct such a thesaurus.

The modern history of the information retrieval thesaurus may be dated from 1947. Even at this early stage a confusion of terminology and purpose was evident. The situation was only partly clarified by the emergence of the first fully operational information retrieval thesaurus in 1959. The intervening period produced a number of theoretical and practical contributions which shaped the thesaurus concept for operational use. The major ideas and influences of this period are examined and related.

ARIES, PHILIPPE. Un lexique par phrases descriptives. Bulletin de l'A.I.D., vol. 5, no. 4, 1966, p. 99–101.

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.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked *, which may be consulted in the Library.

INDUSTRIALLY the two ‘in’ words today seem to be participation and consensus, the first leading to the second. How these can become a reality in modern business was discussed recently by the London Region of the Institute of Work Study Practitioners.

The Branch held a week‐end conference at Hertford College, Oxford, from 17th to 19th April, on the theme ‘Educating the user’. Mr Gordon H.Wright, County Technical Librarian of Hertfordshire, in a paper on ‘Educating tomorrow's potential information user’, discussed critical thinking and the art of communication. Mr J.E.Terry, Information Officer, AERE Harwell, described the course on information sources and library services which is run for scientific officers at AERE. Mrs Irene Veasey of Blackwell's urged that Aslib appoint advisory officers to discuss with representatives of organizations the practical aspects of information dissemination within their own concerns. Mr Jack Bird, Education Officer, Aslib, and the three speakers were on a panel to discuss points arising from the papers, and open discussion then followed.

MANY delegates were plainly astonished when they heard in Dublin that next year the gathering of the European Work Study Federation will take the form of a World Congress on Productivity Science. The reaction was not surprising, for to distend a continent into a globe within the space of seven years is a feat of truly Napoleonic proportions.