Brief History of Information Science
Saul Herner
President, Herner and Company, 1700 North Moore
Street, Arlington, V A 22209
Information science is the product of convergences of ti.
brary science, computer and punched card science, R 81D
documentation, abstracting and indexing, communi.
cations science, behavioral science, micro- and macro-
publishing, video and optical science, and various other
fields and disciplines. The role and contribution of each
participating segment is reflected in certain basic and
seminal writings, in the work of “major actors” in the
field, and in major events or developments. These con.
tributing sources are reviewed, analyzed, and related, as
a means of tracing the history of the field, from its pre
and post-World War II beginnings to the early 1980s, to
the near-termfuture.
It is difficult to place an exact date on the beginning of
what we have come to call information science. The field is
the product of convergences of various disparate disci-
plines and activities: library science, computer science
(and its antecedent punched-card technology), docunien-
tation of research and development, abstracting, indexing,
communications science, behavioral science, micro- and
macro-publishing, and video and optical science, among
others. The specific contributions of these seminal com-
ponents are reflected in the publications in which they
were first analyzed, codified, or predicted; in the people
responsible for bringing them to light; and in major events
or developments that give rise to them.
Some Basic Writings
As We May Think (1945). One of the earliest state-
ments of the problems and opportunities that brought the
inadvertent founders of information science together is
contained in Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” [ l ] .
In this evocative article, Bush, a highly imaginative and
innovative technical planner and administrator, first called
attention to the important role of information in the mas-
sive research and development effort mobilized in support
0 1984 by John Wiley Sr Sons. Inc.
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE. 35(3): 157-163; 1984
of World War I1 and to the significance of information in
a continuing and expanding R & D environment. He sug-
gested, some 35 years before the fact, the availability of
highly compact, cheap, and dependable devices which
would give rise to vast storage and switching capabilities
that would help foster effective use of the available infor-
mation store. He predicted, among other things, the fu-
ture significance in library and information processes of
“dry photography,” microfilm, artificial intelligence,
cathode-ray displays, and logical selection from combina-
tions of codes representing subjects or other descriptive
attributes of documents. He also described “Memex,” his
hypothetical device for storing and searching document
images by subjects and other desired attributes, storing
search results, and showing attribute or content associa-
tions among searches. Perhaps most important, by the
very writing of his article, he conveyed importance and
prestige to this nascent, dimly appreciated field.
Royal Society Conference (1948). Another prinior-
dial publication was the proceedings of the Royal Society
Scientific Information Conference 121. Among the topics
dealt with in the reports produced by the conference were:
the Format of Scientific Publications: Editorial Policy,
Distribution, and the Length of Scientific Communica-
tions; Subject Grouping of Periodicals; General Organi-
zation of Scientific Publications; Delays in Publication
and Availability of Information; Scope and Quality of Ab-
stracts; Techniques of Abstracting: Cooperation Among
Abstracting Organizations; Classification of Docunients
and Their Contents: Methods of Reproduction; Mechani-
cal Indexing; Training and Employment in Information
Work; Guides to Information: Translations; and Review
Publications. The Royal Society Conference brought to-
gether, for the first time, some of the world’s most eminent
scientists (primarily United Kingdom and Common-
wealth) to discuss what was perceived as the full spectrum
of library and information issues as they related to the sci-
ence and technology of the time. Two immediate products
of the conference were the establishment of the need for
author abstracts in scientific and technical papers and a
study, by J. D. Bernal, of how scientists seek and obtain
information and how (and whether) they use the tools and
CCC 0002-82311841030157-07$04.00
resources available to them. A third, implied product was
a new type of information professional: the scientist steeped
in information and library techniques. The ramifications
of these early developments are still very much with us.
Bibliographic Organization (1951). Edited by Jesse
Shera and Margaret Egan, this thin volume brought to-
gether in anthologicalform the thoughts of a group of “con-
ventional” and “new-wave” librarians regarding coming
trends in classification, indexing, forms of publication,
and searching [3]. Bibliographic Orgariizatiori included
two classic and prophetic papers by Mortimer Taube and
Ralph Shaw.
Taube’s paper, “Functional Approach to Bibliographic
Organization,” dealt, inter aliu, with the then-awakening
recognition of the need for special information collections
to serve the needs of increasingly specialized bodies of
users. It described the growing interrelationships and
schisms among research libraries (large libraries of rec-
ord), special libraries, information clearinghouses, and
information analysis centers located in centers of subject
expertise and manned by subject experts. Taube dealt
with the emerging significance of the unpublished research
report, theretofore largely ignored by the library com-
munity, as a vehicle of information. He also described what
he called “bibliographic coordination,” the precursor of
coordinate indexing, which led to the universally applied
notion of inverted indexing, now the basis of most com-
puterized index and text searching systems.
Shaw’s paper was entitled “Management, Machines,
and the Bibliographic Problems of the Twentieth Cen-
tury.” Contrasted with the length and presumption of his
title, his basic points were few, but nevertheless important
and insightful. Shaw examined the importance of the
compression of distances in the elements of memory and
control units (at that time, punched cards, coded micro-
film frames-such as in his prototype Rapid Selector-
microcards, catalog cards, etc.). He showed that none of
the devices and mechanisms then available could support
bibliographic searching until they became much more
compressed and speedier. In developing his thesis, he
helped dash the hopes of many who looked upon comput-
ers as an imminent panacea. It took some 15 years after
his paper before computers began to have significant im-
pacts on bibliographic organization and searching, and
another 10 years before they could be considered com-
monly applied tools.
Punched Cards: Their Applications to Science and In-
dustry (1951, 1958). The first edition of this book was
edited by Robert Casey and James Perry, the second edi-
tion by Casey and Perry, joined by Madeline Berry and
Allen Kent [4]. For many long-time workers in informa-
tion science-including the writer-Punched Cards, in its
first and second editions, provided the first cohesive, per-
spective view of the applications of nonmanual, precom-
puter processes to the field. It took us from Joseph Jac-
quard’s control card for textile looms in 1780, to Charles
Babbage’s statistical punched cards, ca. 1840, to Herman
Hollerith’s pantograph punch and electric accounting
158 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE-May
tabulator and sorter, developed in 1880 for the U.S. Cen-
sus Bureau, to other marginal and interior punched cards,
and beyond into primitive computers. A paragraph from
the preface to the second edition in 1958 is illustrative:
Some idea of the rapidity with which the field has
grown may be gained from the fact that the bibliog-
raphy of uses [of punched cards and related devices]
contains 400 entries, compared with 276 entries in
the first edition [ 19511. This great increase is rcflect-
ed in the extension of the Practical Applications
Section. . .. Here the reader will find a broad survey
of such important and unique uses as the Peek-A-
Boo System; the Uniterm System; mechanized cod-
ing and searching techniques applied to metallurgi-
cal literature; the Zato-coding System; and . . . the
use of punched cards in linguistic analysis as ap-
plied to ancient texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. 14,
p. iii]
Another brief passage further reveals the thrust and impact
of the book:
. . . some general principles are discussed which
may apply to types of mechanical devices not yet in-
vented. [4, p. vl
Indeed they did.
Studies in Coordinate Indexing (1953-1959). This
five-volume work, edited by Mortimer Taube and Associ-
ates, is made up largely of reports of early basic and ap-
plied research projects in information science conducted
by Documentation Incorporated, one of the first coninier-
cial f i i s dedicated to library and information consulting
and research [S].While the full five volumes provide an
excellent review of early developments in information
science as they were happening, the first volume (1953) is
probably the most significant. In it, Taube elaborated and
explained the notion of the coordinate index and intro-
duced its proprietary manifestation, Uniterm indexing.
Aside from providing an efficient, low-cost desk-top tool
for storing and searching inverted index entries, the Uni-
term system, based on document numbers posted on sub-
ject (or other attribute) cards, did much at the tinie to help
librarians and other disseminators and users of informa-
tion media to understand the principles and workings of
information retrieval outside of the traditional printed
index and multiple filing of catalog cards. The Uniterni
system, based on “free” index terms drawn from the texts
being indexed, was also a precursor to text searching by
computer .
Proceedings of the International Conference on Scien-
tifk Infomation (1958). Ten years following the 1948
Royal Society Conference, the International Conference
on Scientific Information (ICSI) took place in Washing-
ton, DC [6].The 82 papers presented at ICSI by many of
the library and information luminaries of the tinie were
divided into seven broad areas: Literature and Reference
Needs of Scientists: Knowledge Now Available and Meth-
ods of Ascertaining Requirements: Function and Ef-
1984
fectiveness of Abstracting and Indexing Services; Effec-
tiveness of Monographs, Compendia. and Specialized
Centers: Present Trends and New and Proposed Tech-
niques and Types of Services; Organization of Informa-
tion for Storage and Search: Comparative Characteristics
of Existing Systems; Organization of Information for Stor-
age and Retrospective Search: Intellectual Problems and
Equipment Considerations in the Design of New Systems;
Organization of Information for Storage and Retrospec-
tive Search: Possibility for a General Theory; Responsibili-
ties of Government. Professional Societies, Universities,
and Industry for Improved Services and Research.
In addition to being broadly international in atten-
dance and representation, ICSI, in common with the
Royal Society Conference, looked into evolving develop-
ments in the intellectual and mechanical aspects of infor-
mation organization and dissemination, us well us the
needs, roles, w i d intermtiom of users. Regarding users,
one thing that was missing in the ICSI program, and con-
tinues to be missing, is the concept of training to make the
most effective use of the available resources, mechanisms,
and techniques. Thus, the subject of “responsibilities,”
was touched upon but not brought to its logical conclusion
by ICSI. It is perhaps reflective of the complexity of
system-user interface and the limited comprehension of
the fact that the user is an integral part of the overall infor-
mation mechanism.
An interesting sidelight characteristic of ICSI was its
tacit preoccupation with Soviet scientific and technical in-
formation apparati and processes. Not only did it take
place one year after the launching of Sputnik I by the
Soviet Union in 1957 (to the deep embarrassment of the
United States), but it had on its program some key mem-
bers of the much-vaunted All-Union Institute of Scientific
and Technical Information. The prevailing wariness with
the Soviet Union was a strong factor in an accelerating
emphasis and support at the time of information pro-
grams by such agencies as the National Science Founda-
tion, the Office of Naval Research, and the Air Force Of-
fice of Scientific Research. In a very real sense, Sputnik
helped launch information science in the United States
and elsewhere.
Information Storage and Retrieval: Tools, Elements,
Theories (1%3). This work. by Joseph Becker and Robert
Hayes, is distinctive in several respects 171. First, it was, to
my knowledge at least, the first textbook that treated in-
formation science as a discrete discipline (or amalgama-
tion of disciplines), and covered it in all its aspects, techni-
cal and behavioral. Second, it was based on one of the first
full courses on the subject, given over a period of years at
UCLA, and thus “field tested.” Third. it apparently em-
boldened and stimulated ninny aspiring book authors,
giving rise to an ensuing array (flood?) of titles covering
most major aspects of the field.
Itlforniutiorr Slorrigr tirid Ketsievul, through its au-
thors-one an engineer and librarian and the other a
mathematician and computer systems specialist-reflects
the variegated character of the field. It also defines the
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE-May
field as it existed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Witness
its major contents: the Librarian and Recorded Knowl-
edge; the Documentalist and the Development of New
Techniques; the Information Framework and the User;
Printed Data and the Creation of a Machine Language;
Analysis, Logical Processing, and the Computer; Indexes,
Documents, and the Storage of Data; Interdisciplinary
Character of Information Systems; Elements of Usage;
Elementary Organization; Elementary Equipment; Pa-
rameters and Implementation; Role of Theory; Theories
of File Organization; Theories of System Design. In its
treatment of these topics, Znformation Storuge und Re-
trievuf is, for its time, an excellent summarization or his-
tory of the field.
Science, Government, and Momration (1963). Known
in the information community as the “Weinberg Report,”
Science, Government, and Znformution was conimis-
sioned by the President’s Science Advisory Committee
(PSAC) [8]. It had considerable impact at the time, relat-
ing and synthesizing the thinking of information leaders
in government and the private sector. Its heart consisted
of two sets of suggestions, one from (and for) the “techni-
cal community” and one from (and for) agencies of the
federal government. The main points of the suggestions
relating to the “technical community” were, and remain,
illuminating, technically and historically:
(1) Authors must accept more responsibility for infor-
mation retrieval (by their use of “retrieval” words in the
texts, titles, and the abstracts they write). (2) Unnecessary
publication should be eliminated. (3) Technical books
must be improved (and gifted authors must be enticed and
rewarded financially). (4) Higher status should be given to
writers of review articles. (5) The best methods and media
of communication should be studied, identified, and ex-
ploited. (6) Scientists and engineers should be trained to
express themselves more effectively. (7) The workings and
methods of information retrieval should be made familiar
to working scientists and engineers. (8) Greater and more
effective effort should be made to enlist and train able sci-
entists and engineers as professionals in information sci-
ence. (9) New steps and techniques must be developed and
used to improve the “information transfer chain.” (Exam-
ples cited include citation indexing, scientific newspapers.
permuted title indexes, and “data and information cen-
ters.”) ( 10) Subject- and mission-oriented depositories of
publications should be promoted. ( I I ) Specialized infor-
mation centers (information analysis centers) should be
promoted. (12) “Mechanization can be important but not
all important.” (Here, the futility, in the early 1960s, of
trying to capture, for example, the Library of Congress
card catalog in machine-readable form, because of the
cost of input, limited storage capacities, and slowness of
searching was recognized. But the probability of reason-
ably near-term remedies of these problems was given as a
sound reason for pursuing small- and large-scale mecha-
nization effort and support.) (13) Citation indexing (par-
ticularly in combination with permutation indexing)
1984 159
should be pursued. (14) Compatibility in indexing lan- the approaching maturity of on-linc access (in addition to
guage, formats, processes, and conventions are impor- its increasingly aggressive marketing and broadening use)
tant, particularly where mechanization is a factor. (15) was the publication of Lancaster and Fayen's Ii!foritziitioii
Government support of private-sector technical publica- Retrieval On-Line [lo]. For its time, Iifi~riii(itiviiRrtric.vtii
tion is necessary. (Page charges are seen as a means of On-Line was tantamount to a handbook or brief encyclo-
meeting the cost of private-sector publishing, but are not pedia on the subject, detailing the following: basic charac-
considered ultimately viable, given strong objections from teristics, equipment used, search methods and cotiveii-
the scientific and technical community.) tions, file designs, descriptions of then-extant systems,
performance-evaluation criteria and methods, applicable
One outgrowth of the Weinberg Report was the estab-
indexing and vocabulary control, on-line applications,
lishment of the Committee on Scientific and Technical In-
and other considerations.
formation (COSATI), which exerted major influence over
Progress between 1973 and now (1983) is indicated in
federal information policies and programs during the
part by the fact that on-line searches were then based al-
1960s and 1970s.
most exclusively on index terms or descriptors. A few sys-
Scientific and Technical Communication (1969).
tems offered text-searching capabilities. but these were
Published by the National Academy of Sciences/National
primarily experimental and generally limited to Lvords in
Academy of Engineering and edited by a staff working
titles.
under the NAS/NAE Committee on Scientific and Techni-
In the course of comparing manual searching and that
cal Information (SATCOM), this volume and its under-
based on batched-mode punched-card and coniputer
lying studies and deliberations were structured somewhat
searches, Lancaster and Fayen suggested. but did not
like the 1948 Royal Society Conference [9]. They were a
quite articulate, an interesting irony: Aside from speed.
partial update of that conference and ICSI, and somewhat
perceived physical convenience, and single-stcp niulti-
complementary to the Weinberg Report. Among the sub-
variable combinations (which are required in a minority of
jects dealt with, and about which recommendations were
cases), on-line searches offer exactly the sanic advantages
framed, were the following: Primary Communications
as manual searches of card catalogs and printed indexes.
(forms and growth, originators and users, meetings, pre-
Both permit direct access to desired search attributes; both
prints and technical reports, serials, translations); the
provide interaction, browsing, and heuristics in searching
Basic Access Services (document access, bibliographic
(through cross references and other devices); both can be
control, abstracting and indexing); Consolidation and Pre-
invoked by multiple users at the same time (by all who
processing (synthesis, review, data compilation, informa-
have copies in the case of printed indexes); both can be in-
tion analysis centers, industrial information services, spe-
voked directly by the user (albeit sometimes with expert
cialized or tailored services, networks); New Technologies
guidance); and both involve niininial delay of access.
and Their Impact (document production and reproduc-
One other useful "by-product" of Ii!fhritzu/iori Rt~tri~ivil
tion, document dissemination, processing of machine-
On-Line is a delineation of five eras in retrieval systems.
readable records, on-line interactive systems, other sys-
ending in 1973. Pre-1940: printed indexes and card cata-
tems approaches): Copyright Problems and Implications.
logs; 1940-1949: semi-mechanized systems such as edged-
While SATCOM delved extensively into matters of
notch and peek-a-boo (optical coincidcncc) cards or
national and international policy, its analyses of new in-
matrices and microfilm searching; 1950- 1959: interior
formation technologies were most significant, historically
punched cards for data processing and limited retrieval.
and predictively. Two sections, on machine-readable rec-
early computer systems. and additional microimage sys-
ords and on-line interactive systems, were among the first
tems (e.g., Minicard, Filmorex. FMA): 1960-1969: batch-
summarizations of the proliferation of databases and
processing computer-retrieval systems, experimental and
their impending broad on-line accessibility. Interestingly,
primitive operating on-line systems, and more advanccd
at the time of the SATCOM report (1969), there were
microimage systems (e.g.. WALNUT); 1970-1973: dini-
around 35 nationally available computerized databases
inution of batch-mode and expansion of on-line systems.*
(and they were usually not called databases but machine-
Libraries and Librarians in an Age of Electronics
readable bibliographic records). They were searched in
(1982). Lancaster helps bring matters up to date in this
the batched mode. On-line systems were almost exclu-
volume, which summarizes and synthesizes his and other
sively experimental. Only the System Development Cor-
writings on the near-term implications of advances in
poration offered a small variety of commercially accessible
computer and communications technology [ 1 11. The book
databases, which were mounted and searched via various
goes far beyond the "Libraries and Librarians" in its title.
types of software, of which ORBIT was one. The number
of on-line databases and the number of vendors making
them available have since proliferated. On-line software, *One might interpolate, with respect to the pre-1940 era. t h a t the
most significant development of the 19.30s WIS the waikibility 0 1 riich
on the other hand, has diminished in variety and become
publications as the New York Times on inicrofilni. 'l'his had a very pro-
more-or-less standardized (although their names or acro- found effect on the retrospective use of the 7imc.s and other proiiiiiiciit
nyms seem to accelerate constantly). publications of rccord, particularly it1 public i i i i d large rc\c;irch
Information Retrieval On-Line (1973). One sign of libraries.

160 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE-May 1984

A sampling of the chapters making up the book is provoc-
ative: Computers and Publishing; A Paperless Communi-
cation System; the Disembodiment of the Library; Does
the Library Have a Future? As its title implies, it is made
up of well-reasoned and documented conjecture and ex-
trapolation. Their underlying bases provide rich insight as
to the recent and earlier past of information science.
Continuing his discussion of on-line systems, Lan-
caster shows, via his own statistics and those of others,
that such systems have arrived with a vengeance. Batch-
mode searches have all but disappeared; an increasing
number of libraries and information centers are dropping
their subscriptions to ink print abstracting and indexing
services in favor of on-line versions, taking into account
the fact that most users go back five years or less when
making a search (a very old but generally ignored finding);
and the cost of purchasing and storing massive collections
of sporadically used printed matter is becoming less and
less justifiable.*
We are now entering an era of new forms of publication
and communication between the information apparatus
and the user. Video and optical disks containing primary
and secondary information are coming on the market,
and their availability and use are likely to accelerate rap-
idly, as mechanisms for production and reading become
cheaper and more broadly available. Newer specialized
reference and abstracting and indexing services are al-
ready beginning to bypass ink print, disseminating di-
rectly from the computer to the user’s terminal and print-
ing off-line only on request. The computer has long since
replaced the teletype as the preferred form of rapid com-
munication of information products and services. The fol-
lowing scenario, already tested, refined, and being imple-
mented by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to
Lancaster. tells the story and brings us up to 1983:
(1) Messages coming into a central computer are dis-
seminated directly to the terminals of analysts with
no intermediate paper copy. Dissemination is con-
tinuous for some messages, based on analyst interest
profiles, and one-time or limited-time for others.
(2) Analysts read incoming messages on-line and then
(a) dispose of them, (b) reroute them to other ana-
lysts, or (c) store them in personal electronic files.
( 3 ) Analysts communicate with one another on-line in
one-to-one or conference mode.
(4) On-line terminals give analysts access to their own
information files, those of their parent branches,
agency-wide files, and a wide variety of external
databases.
(5) Files of documents are accessible for searching via
descriptors or in full-text.
(6) A docitment-delivery system allows the full text of
*Supplementing tmcastcr’s \tati\tics. in 1979 there were 528 na-
tionally acce\sihlc cimiputcrircd databases, the bulk of which were coni-
niercially available on-line. More than 60% of these were being pro-
duced by for-profit private sector orgmiiations [ 121.
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE-May
any item to be communicated to a user terminal or
in microform.
Document files are interfaced with “computation”
programs so that data can be extracted from text
and manipulated in various ways.
Analysts compose intelligence reports on-line with
the aid of text-editing facilities and disseminate
these reports, as appropriate, over the on-line net-
work.
In short, for those who can comprehend, abide. and af-
ford them, paperless publishing, communications. and
libraries are already upon us.
Some Main Actors
Mention has already been made, in discussions of their
writings, of some of the primary chroniclers. innovators,
and prognosticators of information science. There are
others who are better known by their “monuments” than
by what they have written.
Calvin Mooers, in company with Taube, Perry, Casey,
Kent, Berry, Shaw, Shera, and others, is surely one of the
founders of information science. He is generally credited,
among other accomplishments, with coining the terms
“information retrieval” and “descriptors,” and was one
of the first to rationalize the retrieval and system design
processes. Mooers was an early experimenter in the use of
marginal punched cards with superimposed random
number codes in retrieval. He helped crystallize the notion
and causes of “false drops” or false coordinations in
search products and advanced means of preventing them.
He was one of the earliest proponents of what he called
“reactive typewriters.” now known as word processors
and on-line terminals [ 13,141.
Hans Peter Liihti is probably the closest thing we have
to a Thomas Edison in this field. Among his inventions
are: self-demarcating code words. auto-encoding (indes-
ing based on statistical associations), auto-abstracting,
multiple-attribute searching via IBM cards and card sort-
ers, selective dissemination of information (SDI) systems,
Keyword-in-Context (KWIC) indexing. thesauri of inclex-
ing and retrieval terms, automatic production of “tree”
relationships among classes of index terms. and machine-
readable book catalog records [ 151. Many of his ideas,
developed in the era of punched cards, have carried over
to computers and are still fundamental in the applications
of computers to information and library science.
Eugene Gutjield, another of our great inventors, is bcst
known for Cirrrerit Contents. the Scic~ricc.Cittrtiori Itidrs.
and the Sociul Science Citcitivti Itidex. * He was onc of the
*Innate modesty precludes niy nientioning that. in addition to his
own fertile imagination, S h c p i r d i Ci/t/fifJ//.s.
and othcr influence\. one
of the sources of the ideas that led to the Scicvrct. Ci/u/io/i / / r t / r s and all
that followed was a finding from a sttidy I conducted ;it thc John\ Hop-
kins University (while a colleague there of 111..Garficld) that ;I priniary
means by ushich scientists bccaine awarc of useful puhlicatiori~i\ tlinwgh
cited references. This is a rare exoniple of an applic:ition of ii rc\~iItBI’
user studies. which usually lead only to niorc i w r \ludic\ 1161.
1984 161
earliest experimenters in the automatic manipulation of
indexes through punched card techniques. He was also
one of the earliest, and most successful, proponents of the
“spin-off,” producing dozens of new secondary services
froni the Citation Index databases. In many respects, he is
responsible for the existing information industry, based as
it is primarily on the repackaging and redissemination of
existing files. Through the structure of the Citation Index,
which shows citation relationships among similar and dis-
parate publications, he helped revitalize the somewhat
dormant field of bibliometrics.
Roger Sumtizit can be reasonably called the “Father of
On-Line Systems.” While there certainly were many early
efforts in the direction of remote searching of computer-
readable files (such as MIT’s Project MAC and SDC’s
ORBIT), it remained for Summit and his colleagues at
Lockheed to bring them to broadly accessible, commer-
cially viable fruition. This development took place in two
stages. The first was the installation of a DIALOG on-line
system in 1967 at the NASA Ames Research Center, to
search some 300,000 records stored at the Lockheed Palo
Alto Research Laboratory. This was followed by addi-
tional installations in other parts of NASA, as well as
other agencies in the United States and Europe. The sec-
ond stage was the mounting of a broadened range of
computer-readable databases and the founding of Lock-
heed’s DIALOG, which helped make commonplace the
on-line searching and storing of computer-readable refer-
ence and bibliographic resources by libraries and infor-
mation centers throughout the United States and the re-
mainder of the industrialized world [17].
Frutik B. Rogers, physician and librarian, did much to
bring to reality many of the possibilities of the 1940s,
1950s, and 1960s. At his operating base, the National Li-
brary of Medicine, which he directed from 1949 to 1964,
he oversaw the development of MEDLARS (Medical Liter-
ature Analysis and Retrieval System), the first computer-
based system combining page composition and the stor-
age and retrieval of literature references; he put into place
the first national and regional library network: and with
MEDLARS, he laid the groundwork for the nationally ac-
cessible MEDLINE and its various specialized offshoots
1181. Perhaps as a fitting gift, MEDLARS became opera-
tional in 1964, at the time of his retirement from the Na-
tional Library of Medicine.
Epilogue and Apologia
This short attempt at a historical summary of a field as
complex and amorphous as information science is perhaps
presumptuous. There is no question that in my coverage of
the main writings of the field I have left out much more
than I have included. The same can be said of pivotal
events and developments. With respect to “main actors,”
many omitted names immediately come to mind (and
these are only a partial list): Robert Fairthorne, one of the
earliest and most astute analysts of modern information
162 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE-May
science, and one of the first and few to distinguish among
codes, words, messages, and information-concepts that
are still constantly confused; E. J. Crane, who shepherded
Chemical Abstracts for 43 years, during which it became
the most prominent information tool of science and tech-
nology and a model for existing and ensuing secondary
services and databases in other fields; Melvin Duy, who
solidified the notion of the integrated information clear-
inghouse and helped establish the first working examples;
G. S. Simpson, who gave life (and early documentation) to
the concept of the information analysis center combining
information sources and interpretive talents: Cyril Clever-
don, who, through the Cranfield experiment and preci-
sion and recall, introduced and demonstrated the qualita-
tive and quantitative evaluation of indexes: Donald Kitig,
an early (and current) evaluator and statistical historian
and prognosticator; Gerard Salton, developer (ca. 1961)
of SMART (System for the Mechanical Analysis and Re-
trieval of Text), which extended Luhn’s notion of indexes
and searches based on the computer manipulation of
natural-language texts; John Muuchley , co-designer and
developer during World War I1 of ENIAC, the first elec-
tronic full-scale computer, and a major force in the ini-
tial application of computers to information problems:
Thomas Allen, who, perhaps more than anyone, demon-
strated via his “gatekeeper” concept that (1) the behav-
ioral and societal aspects of information communication
are critical and (2) that the user is indeed a vital part of the
information mechanism; Frederick Kilgour, who devel-
oped and implemented the Ohio College Library Center
(OCLC),now the Online Computer Library Center, the
first operational national computer-based interlibrary net-
work: Henriette Avram, who brought computer technology
to bear in the rationalization, preparation, and use of the
traditionally art-bound library catalog card: and Ctirfos
Cuadra, who helped bring information science maturity,
perspective, and recognition through the Atitiirul Review q /
Information Science and Technology, and continues to
probe the impact and significance of on-line databases
from the user viewpoint.
My main solace and redemption for what I have left out
of this article is that, given the dynamics of the field, 1, or
someone else, will undoubtedly be performing this task
again, and covering much the same territory. One endur-
ing characteristic of information science is its circularity.
Consider, for instance, Taube’s “free indexing” of the
1950s which many conservatives in the field viewed as
tantamount to free love. Now, in the 1980s, both are ac-
cepted and embraced with rising enthusiasm.
The computer terminal, the key to “high technology”
in information science and other fields, is now giving rine
to new cottage industries. Abstractors, indexers, editors,
and others like them, are, with increasing frequency, do-
ing their daily work in their homes on terminals attachcd
to their employers’ computers.
To complete the circle, we at Herner and Company are
experimenting with a method of beating the high cost of
terminals installed in operators’ homes and of conimuni-
1984
cating with them on a real-time basis. We are trying out
the idea of providing our field abstractors and indexers
with standard-font portable typewriters, having them type
their copy, and mailing or delivering it to us, so that we
can convert it into computer-readable form via an inex-
pensive optical character recognition device. Can we, in
fact, ever get rid of paper?
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