Search results

Extension of the Selective Dissemination of Information system required the adoption of computer‐based techniques. The indexing language adopted is UDC and it was necessary to construct user profiles based on this classification. Profiles have been compiled for individual clients of the service, for works within the British Steel Corporation, and for broad fields of activity within the iron and steel industry. Use of the service has shown that UDC provides a satisfactory basis for profile compilation. The majority of profiles so far constructed have relevance of over 95%, based on user assessment. Possible future developments in the compilation of the profiles are considered.

The November evening meeting will be held on Thursday 26th November, on ‘The dissemination of published information to the executives of a major steel group’. The speaker will be Mr Richard Hindson, ALA Information Officer, Colvilles Limited. The Chair will be taken by Mr Julian Blackwell of Blackwell's, Oxford. Mr Hindson will illustrate from his experience in the iron and steel industry how free interchange of information can be achieved within an industry. An increasing number of companies are raising the calibre of their executives by management development and training schemes, but as far as the speaker is aware no group other than Colvilles is evolving a scheme which ensures that, once managers and specialists are appointed to particular posts, they are kept informed of developments relative to these posts. Mr Hindson will describe the information service that has been set up on these lines by the Colville Group of Companies.

I think that it would be sensible for me to begin this presentation with a declaration of my interest in the Universal Decimal Classification. I first became acquainted with the Classification over twenty‐five years ago while I was a student at the Loughborough School of Librarianship. Subsequently I utilized the Classification in various technical college libraries and libraries and information services in the engineering and steel industries. Eventually I was responsible for the conception, development and implementation of a computer based integrated information handling system for the steel industry. I described this system, as it was at the time, in a paper I presented at the Fifth Cranfield International Conference on Mechanized Information Storage and Retrieval Systems in 1975.

Until recently the writer participated actively in the application and development of the Universal Decimal Classification, principally by means of computer‐based techniques available via large ICL 1900 series installations. During the decade 1968–1978 a multi‐purpose database was developed and operated using remote computer resources equipped with extensive telecommunication facilities. Primarily designed to support senior managers, the subject coverage of the system encompasses all matters judged to be useful in the particular business environment concerned. One feature of the system is the use of the UDC for both information (reference) retrieval and profile matching. It is hoped that some personal reflections arising from the experience gained and on associated matters will be useful to those involved in the management of information in large organizations.

Shortly after the war, The Iron and Steel Institute was able, through the Occupying Power, to assist the Verein Deutscher Eisenhttenleute, a body in Germany kindred in some ways to itself, to recover and reassemble its library, which had been dispersed for safety towards the end of the fighting. This operation was carried out by Mr Headlam‐Morley, the Secretary, and Professor G. Wesley Austin; the operation was of such importance that they both received, for the purpose, the equivalent rank of brigadier. I was then operating in BIOS with the equivalent rank of captain, and do not think that the two brigadiers and I ever met at the time; we have met frequently since.

The British iron and steel industry has long been conscious of the need to provide facilities for the free interchange of relevant information. It was, in fact, the consciousness that the free interchange of information is necessary to a prosperous industry which led to the establishment of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1869.

The Institute of Public Relations defines the practice of public relations as ‘the deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its public’. Although this definition is clear and concise and its implications are readily understood by people active in the field, it does not really make clear that public relations is primarily concerned with people as individuals. In any kind of social activity or investigation it is very tempting to divide people into groups. Group identification is a useful preliminary to further activity and research. Such identification is certainly useful to an industrial information service since the clientele is divided into groups almost automatically by the reason of their function, e.g. accountants, engineers, executives, managers, metallurgists, research scientists, technologists and so on.

Three senior appointments have been announced in the International Paint Packaging Coatings Division.

The death was announced on 21st December 1964 of Mr H. R. Verry, who was known to many members of Aslib. Up to his retirement in 1963 Mr Verry was Adviser on Photographic and Allied Processes to the O & M Section of the Treasury. He was the author of a number of textbooks on photographic reproduction techniques and often contributed to the book reviews in the Journal of Documentation.

May MON.24 — FRI.28. Course on abstracting and co‐ordinate indexing.