Year: 1974
Type: article
Abstract: THEDECADE which ended in 1973 witnessed the establishment and rapid evolution of computer-based information retrieval systems in science and technology throughout the world.The pioneering efforts of American systems-MEDLARS, Chemical Abstracts Service, BioScience Information Service, and the Institute for Scientific Information, all of which have been responsive to the information needs of biomedical scientists, established models for international cooperation in scientific information services which have had a profound effect upon the growth of the field.This paper will treat one aspect of this development: the introduction of these services to users in other countries.Some preliminary considerations may be helpful.Each of the systems noted above, and indeed any other computer-based system offering services at the national and the international level, is a socio-technical system of great complexity.Such systems are new to the world.Their novelty has three aspects: technical, managerial, and performance-the confrontation of users with novel and unconventional search procedures.The rapidity of developments in computer technology which have made systems obsolete in three to five years are well known.For example, random access disc storage devices had just come on the market while the technical aspects of MEDLARS I were being specified.Their high price at that time made it impossible for MEDLARS, with its projected volume, to be other than a batch-process tape-drive system, subject to rapid obsolescence.Any interpretation of the performance and utilization of computer-based retrieval systems must be made in the light of the technology available to them at different points in their historical development.
Author: Scott Adams
Language: English
Subfield: Library and Information Sciences
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W330300803