Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information Two Volumes (1959) / Chapter Skim
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The Transmission of Scientific Information
The Transmission of Scientific Information
Pages 77-96
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From page 77... ...
It does not set out the results of any enquiry on the uses ofscientificinformation nor does it confine its interest to the specific theme of the Conference on the Storage arid Retrieval of Scientific Information. I understand very well why the Conference had to be so limited, for the subject of scientific information as a whole, which was dealt with at the Royal Society Conference ten years ago, has now grown so large that it can be attacked only piecemeal.
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From page 78... ...
Here at the outset would defend this position because I consider for various reasons, some of which I will touch on later, that there are fields of enquiry of such complexity, variability, and novelty that verbal and qualitative analysis should precede numerical analysis whether objective or by questionnaire. I am here proposing only to indicate the nature of the enquiry, not to answer questions that might be raised in it.
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From page 79... ...
Consequently, any action basest on analysis of present user habits is unlikely to produce impressive results. What I will try to do in this paper is first to give my own natural historical account of the whole process of the transmission of scientific information, indicating in the course of this what further enquiries or actions, such as analysis, would seem to be called for.
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From page 80... ...
In that way the same fact, or method, more or less, may be rediscovered many times. The detailed history of science is so inadequate that we have no measure of how often this occurs, but that it does occur I am certain, for I have myself both discovered experimentally several things already known and had my own published work rediscovered experimentally by others (Appendix, Item 101.
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From page 81... ...
I must include technical information here because nowadays no scientist can do his work well without technical information and vice versa. Now from the point of view of the kind of information services required, users can be divided into the following categories which are strictly functional, for the same man can at different times belong to any of these categories: (a)
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From page 82... ...
Category all, which includes most academic scientists at some stages of their careers, is not large numerically, but their special requirement for thorough coverage of a particular field subjects information services to a serious and probably salutary strain. However, all such workers are not merely users of the information services but also contributors to it they should .
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From page 83... ...
The service is by no means perfect, but short of reorganising the whole of scientific publications, which will have to be done some time, there is little that can be done about it now by the information services as such. Indeed, the very chaos of present-day publications and the unpredictability of their contents automatically ensures a more or less random sampling of the field of science by the average scientific user.
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From page 84... ...
However, this problem of acquiring what might be called central information is not one which calls much on information services except indirectly. For the research worker would not, in general, be doing the work he does unless he already had, by his own efforts or through those working with him in the same project, mastered existing sources of information in his field and knew where to look for new results as they come out.
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From page 85... ...
Some years ago the British National Physics Laboratory sent round some of its expert staff to laboratories of research associations covering different aspects of applied science, such as rubber, Hour milling, pottery, and leather. They found that, while in their own fields the knowledge of equipment in these establishments was well ahead, this was not the case where it lay outside their special field of competence.
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From page 86... ...
Certainly everyone, even former offenders, would gain if all scientific publications were genuinely new, concise, and accurate accounts of work done. It woulc!
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From page 87... ...
The average scientific author of today I am not talking of men of established reputations or easily recognised young geniuses has less chance of having his work understood and maple use of than at any previous period in the history of science. There is just not time to read all the papers, and the chance that any particular one will find the reader or readers who will make use of it within the very short effective life of scientific publications is small; exactly how small, it would be very interesting to know (Appendix, Item 9~.
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From page 88... ...
The contradiction I cited above is only an apparent one; its resolution can be found by treating original scientific publications no longer as the main exchangeable currency of scientific information but as the raw material for processing storable and retrievable information for the general reader. This implies in no way a restriction of the amount of direct contact between the original worker and his reader.
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From page 89... ...
Only the first of these, data, is at present suited to simple storage and retrieval techniques, and over many fields these are being so stored, while better and better methods are being designed for their complete and rapid retrieval. The problem of storing procedures and methods including descriptions of equipment is intrinsically much more difficult, but it is one which would be of enormous value to solve, for I am convinced that the present slow rate of transmission of techniques, particularly instrumental techniques, forms at the moment the most restrictive single factor to scientific advance.
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From page 90... ...
The cumulative secondary publications by contrast will not be intended for reading, but for reference. Already, over all the easily reduced parts of science they exist as Mathematical Tables, Data Tables, Floras, and Handbucher, etc.
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From page 91... ...
Data collections are too often considered only in their passive aspect but, except as the subject of historical studies, they need continual working over, of which they never get enough, as the hollies responsible for them are generally so short of means that they have all they can do to get the new data. Good data tables need to be reclassified and rearranged at decennial intervals, or more frequently in rapidly moving fields.
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From page 92... ...
Indeed, I had a striking example of this in the conclusions from the rapid pilot survey of reading habits carried out for the Royal Society Information Conference (3~. Before that, I had been so much impressed, through the experience of my own work, with the importance of reprints that I had proposed a scheme for substituting a rational distribution of these for the traditional scientific periodicals.
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From page 93... ...
I do not think, however, that, in proposing a greater use of the experience and knowledge of individual, active scientists in the whole procedure of information services, I am in fact taking an opposition view, but rather proposing a very necessary complement to the increased use of mechanical methods. What ~ feel we need to do is to find the areas most suited to the capacities of the human mind and those most suited to mechanical processes.
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From page 94... ...
in documented work in this positive and useful way would, in my opinion, be a most valuable introduction to them of modern documentary science. Many of the enquiries reported on or proposed at this Conference would give very different results if the scientists whose behaviour is being studied had a thorough grounding in the use of libraries and information services.
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From page 95... ...
3. Royal Society Scientific Information Conference, Tune-Tuly, 1946.
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