NEWSA N D NOTES
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WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY PROJECTS
Techniques are being developed a t the Center for the analysis, machine storage, and retrieval of information in the literature pertaining to conimunicable diseases, diabetes, and educational research. The program in communicable disease literature is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, that in diabetes by the American Diabetes Association, and the pilot program in education by the U. S. Office of Education. In each of these programs, encoded material is already being stored on magnetic tape and experimental searches are being performed on the GE-225.
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION ACTIVITIES
Ramo-Wooldridge Corp., Canoga Park, Calif., will continue investigation of new techniques for language data processing under a cost-sharing Foundation contract. The work will include processing 300,000 words of Russian text as part of a program to partially automate dictionary compilation, and is expected to further a current program by the firm in mechanical translation. A Foundation grant to the National Biomedical Research Foundation, New York, N. Y., has been made for further development of “Tabledex,” a coordinate mkthod of indexing a bibliography by tables of numbers corresponding to articles, and associated with descriptive indexing words found the articles. The grant will permit work on the use of computers to assist in automatic preparation of such indexes. The method will be developed using reports from the International Geophysical Year collection of the Library of Congress. Staff members of the Library of Congress will evaluate results. The Foundation will provide partial continuing support of a National Bureau of Standards basic research program on the definition of visual patterns and language together with analysis by syntactic methods. The research is directed towards a “picture language machine” system capable of both processing and furnishing semantic interpretation of textual and related diagrammatic information. The use made of translated Soviet scientific journals will be studied by the Syracuse University Research Institute under a Foundation grant. Direct inquiry by correspondence and by interview will be used to assess the opinions of users of the translations. A survey of references in articles and books of American authorship
to determine the number and kind of citations of translated material also will be undertaken. The Foundation will support a Lehigh University project to prepare reviews of books in psychology and allied subjects published in Russian and other Slavic languages. The reviews are to be published in Contemporary Psycholog.y, a journal of the American Psychological Association, and other periodicals. Studies of a proposed curriculum for training science information specialists are being made by Georgia Institute of Technology with a Foundation grant. Consideration will be given to the feasibility of short courses in science information for both scientists and engineers as well as librarians, in-service training, and graduate and undergraduate courses of study leading to degrees in the science information speciality.
SEMINAR IN SEARCH STRATEGY
The Graduate School of Library Science of Drexel Institute of Technology is offering a Seminar in Search Strategy, from April 30 through June 8, 1962. The course is designed for persons experienced in the fields of electronics or documentation, who wish to extend their knowledge to include all the current techniques in information retrieval. Students will receive not only an explanation of leading systems of documentation, methods of thesaurus construction, and methods of indexing, but will obtain personal experience with various types of equipment ranging from the simplest automation devises to complex electronic computers. Detailed information is available from: Seminar in Search Strategy, Graduate School of Library Science, Drexel Institute of Technology, Philadelphia 4,Pa.
ANNOUNCEMENT
Gregory Abdian has joined the staff of the Institute for Advancement of Medical Communication, a non-profit organization in New York City devoted to research and development of improved methods for biomedical communication. He was formerly Program Director of Research Data and Information Services, Office of Scientific Information Service, National Science Foundation.
