P U B L I C A T I O N S A N D S E R V I C E S FXCXl C H E M I C A L A B S T R A C T S SERVICE
Publlications and Services from Chemical Abstracts Service' R. E. O'DETTE and S. W. TERRANT, Jr. Chemicol Absirac's Service The Ohio State University, Columbus. Ohio 43210 Received June
6,1966
Thie greatest need of the small information service appears to be for purchasable, specially designed services that provide maximum power, flexibility, and efficiency in treatment of appropriate areas of the open literature. Chemical Abstracts Service is emphasizing development from a computer base of such services, in printed and m'achine language formats, to augment the internal capabilities of small services.
Among the many aspects of scientific and technical documentation that continue to change, the relationship between information processors and users is criticai. While the traditional printed page and personal conversation continue to be mainstays of an individual's information gathering system. we reckon with the growing power that the computer. the specialized information center, and the special library have in serving the individual. The traditional role of CAS has been that of a publisher of reference tools for the chemical and engineering community. But the changing and growing needs of the user of information---the individual ultimate consumer, as well as the information service operator --are such that publication alone is no longer adequate. Therefore, CAS now looks upon itself less a:; a publisher than as a disciplinewide information service whose main customers are them.se1re.s frequently information services in their own company or institution. CAS will continue tcl publish printed journals and books. improving these however and whenever the need for, and nature of. real improvements become clear and the means for accomplishing them feasible. But it is in serving the individual and the infxmation service professionals (who in turn serve scientists and engineers in research, development. and applied technology1 that the most significant. far-reaching. and difficult-to-accomplish changes will probably occur. I t is in this direction that CAS is now giving serious attention in planning new services and in modifying those nou- offered. The newly emerging role of CAS brings with it new problems. These problenis may be divided into three categories: first, the techniques of collecting, processing. organizing. arid disseminating current awareness and reference information: second. the organizational relations between CAS and its subscribers and supporters, including the government: and third, the economics of serving institutional reprocessors as well as individual consumers of information. Scientific and technical publications and information services must be provided a t prices that the user can pay, that are fair measures of value. and that provide the income e:;sential to keep the source viable.
Presented tiefore rhe Di\ iqion of ('liemical Literature. Syrnpwium on I'roblemi of Small Infrirmatinn (;rmipq. l i l s r l a t i o n a l \leetin. ot' t h e American Chemical S o c i e t i Pittsburgh. Pa.. \larch 2:. Illldi.
VOL.6. S o . 3. ACGEST1966
Of course. this generalization applies not only to CAS. but t o all services, whether nonprofit or commercial. PHILOSOPHY
I n the absence of reliabie data on users' needs t o facilitate sophisticated design of specialized publications arid information services. the producer of such services must nevertheless proceed as best he can to define the needs of his customers. R e might wish that the situation were otherwise, but we know that it is not. The needs of the user and the economic feasibility of serving him are the two main parameters in the design of publications and services. For neither parameter can we presently obtain what an engineer would call good design data. As a point of departure, however, it is possible to list a number of characteristics that are desirable in information service. characteristics that users should want and probably do. This list is not highly original nor are the characteristics necessarily the only ones that can or should be possessed by information systems. But they are clearly of importance. On our list we place awareness. timeliness. appropriate detail, reliability, access to relaled disciplines. flexibility of input and output formats, and continuity. By awareness we mean that a chemist or chemical engineer needs t o be aware of what mankind already knows about topics which are important to him. Obviously. as the volume of information grows. it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain or provide awareness. By timeliness we mean that a man wants to be made aware of new information when it is new to others also. Further. when he asks a question he wants his answer promptly. Perhaps "responsiveness" would be a good partial synonym for "timeliness." Appropriate detail could be paraphrased as ". . , as much information as I need. not more nor less." The question is not whether the user knows what he wants. but whether the information system can respond appropriately to the questions put to it. Xeliabiiit>' shouid apply to man?; aspects of information service. The user must be able to rely on his services t o be and do what they say they are and do. I t would probably be possible to write a complete paper on the topic of reliability. Access io related disripline.? is one of the knottiest problems in science information today. I t is not enough for a service to state that it covers all of a science or a 161
R. E. O’DETTEA N D S.W. TERRANT, JR. technology. Yor is it enough for a service to cover a few journals in each major field and then state that it covers all of science. The user is concerned with a particular problem: it should be possible for him to move freely among information services to find information pertinent to his problem, regardless of its interdisciplinary peculiarities. Flexibi/ity is a characteristic that is becoming increasingly critical. By it we mean that a user must be able t o frame his questions in the terms in which he wants answers rather than in terms that he thinks the information system can respond to. I n nearly all presently available services and publications, the producing organization has made format, vocabulary, and classification decisions based in part on its impression of what the user wants. Regardless of how carefully user opinions are assessed a t some point in time. use of a fixed layout to serve widely varying needs will result in some users with unsatisfied demands. Continuitj must be maintained so that the user can find information, even though changes have been made in the format or type of service. Throughout, the information user must try t o understand his own needs better so that he can communicate them to the information system designer. Lacking such understanding and communication, the system designer is forced to rely on his own best, unaided judgment. which is often good, but not infallible. CAS is examining all of its actions in the light of this philosophy. We are also taking actions that recognize the fact that information users exist in two overlapping classes-first, members of the scientific and technical community a t large and second, members of a smaller, more tightly knit institutional community. This classification of users will have a growing influence on the nature of information services rendered and on the means of providing them, not only with respect t o CAS-produced services, but as a general rule throughout the scientific and technical community. The initial difference between community and institutional services is a philosophical one, but if the difference is to be practically meaningful it must be translated quickly into mechanics and economics. The community service may be defined as one produced for the use of any members of a public community, identified as a community because of a similarity of interest in a subject matter. The medium of service is probably broad in scope, and the information provided requires no reprocessingthat is, outside the user’s mind-before it can be used. An institutional service, in contrast, is one designed to serve as input to a reprocessing step within, or for. an institution such as a company, a laboratory, or a university. CAS is devoting increasing attention to the problem of providing collections of information from the open literature of the world, processed in such a manner that the data can be absorbed easily by the information service center in a corporation, government agency. or academic institution. The characteristics of these collections must be such that they can be blended (as a whole or in part) by the inforination center with proprietary or other controlled-circulation information to meet the specific needs of the center’s so-called “in-group.’’ 162
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM CURRENT CAS PUBLICATIONS A N D SERVICES
We can illustrate some of the different characteristics of community and institutional services by calling attention to particular characteristics of several services now produced by CAS. Chemical Abstracts itself has been designed to be used by members of the chemical and chemical engineering public who come to CA t o find what they need to know. CAS maintains for CA operational definitions of chemistry and chemical engineering that are intended to be broad and inclusive. These definitions are under constant review to enable CA to respond flexibly to changes in the perimeters of the fields covered. Within the definitions of chemistry and chemical engineering, we attempt to recognize the unbroken continuum from basic or pure research to applied technology so that all aspects of the two disciplines are covered. Given these definitions of subject scope, we maintain the further objective of world coverage of new information in journals, patents, books, and reports. These are characteristics of CA that all recognize. How well these characteristics satisfy the needs of a particular user depends on many different factors. In the context of this discussion of small information services, the role of CA might be considered t o be roughly analogous in certain ways to that of an encyclopedia. I t is a fundamental reference service that is judged on the frequency with which it answers questions, not on the volume of material which it contains but which is not used. I t will provide answers to a wide range of questions, assuming that the questions are reasonably within its scope. The separately published groups of CA sections make CA more practically useful to the individual or small group by providing more narrowly defined and smaller packages. Chemical Titles (CT) and Chemical-Biological Actiiities (CBAC), in their published forms, are similarly useful to a generalized audience interested in the subject matter that they cover. They serve as alerting as well as retrieval tools. as will new services as they are developed. The audience for C T is essentially the same as that for CA, since C T also draws from chemical and chemical engineering literature; however, the number of journals covered is more limited. The CBAC audience is smaller and more specialized because the subject matter covered is more specialized. To carry the partial analogy between CA and an encyclopedia a bit further, the CA section groupings are smaller, subject-oriented versions not replacing the larger version, but sufficing in many instances. The section groupings of CA and the multiple-copy prices for CBAC are specifically intended to permit the small information service to multiply its own effectiveness by providing copies to those members of the group served who have occasion to use these services frequently. C T and CBAC on magnetic tape, as search services. are inherently different from the related published versions in a number of ways. Possibly the most significant is that they are reprocessable t o suit changing needs. An institutional information service with access t o a computer can select from and repackage the contents of C T or CBAC to suit its purposes. Further, since the information is in machine-manipulable form, it remains reprocessable JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL DOCUMENTATION
PUBLICATIONS A N D SERVICES FROM CHEMICAL ABSTRACTS SERVICE without additional intellectual analysis. This approach, harking back to the flexibility characteristic mentioned earlier. is a fundamental requirement of all new services being developed or planned by CAS. CA in microfilm form is also quite adaptable to the needs of the “in-house” information service that wants to combine coverage of the open literature and internal. proprietary information. I n addition to ease of copying (an essential of flexible service) the increased speed of lookup is advantageous. ILLUSTRATION FROM PROSPECTIVE CAS PUBLICATIONS A N D SERVICES
The Chemical Compound Registry System and the Chemical Substructurr Search System are two developing CAS facilities that should prove to be especially powerful tools for the institutional information service, small as well as large. Both services, when available, will permit individual companies or laboratories to obtain highly individualized treatment of compounds for better indexing, faster file maintenance, and faster and more flexible file searches. Again, the potential for mingling open and proprietary literature in a manner best suited to the users’ needs is clearly present and will be a significant feature of these services. The Registry System will provide, on a computer base. files of chemical structure information, nomenclature, and bibliographic data, all linked through unique computer addresses (or Registry Numbers) of the compounds. Substructure searches will permit precise analysis of individual file records of structures to answer specific as well as generic queries. Substructure search programs will also permit fragmentation coding of private files of compounds and thus permit rapid updating. or even complete revision, of existing files as user organization needs change. CONCLUSION
I n the final analysis, the greatest need of the information staff of three or less is for maximum power, flexibility,
and efficiency in services that can be obtained from the outside to deal with information problems, the scope and size of which are beyond in-house capability. Either by nature or by decision such services will obviously augment the in-house staff and at the same time free them to devote more time to management of the information problems that may be peculiar to their own organization. I t may be felt, for example, that manipulation of proprietary information cannot be performed adequately by outsiders. By the same token. advantage should be taken of the “outsider’s” ability to do what he is frequently better able to do-deal with the open literature. In the case of CAS. for example, developments now underway may permit a user to obtain a Chemical Titles-type treatment of journal lists chosen by the subscriber from among all journals covered by CAS. The economic considerations that affect CAS in providing reprocessable services for the institutional user are to a considerable extent shared by all other information services. whether commercial or nonprofit. I t appears that if the small information service expects to remain small in size while growing in power to serve, it must call upon outside strength to augment itself. At least some of this augmentation must be provided in the form of information services in new formats, such as magnetic tape and machine-searchable microfilm. These formats are more costly to produce. and yet a single copy is much more powerful than a single copy of a publication. Therefore, the new formats have greater value. The problem for all concerned is one of maintaining viability. Viability is the goal of the organization served by the small information service, it is the goal of the service itself, and it is the goal of CAS in aiding the small information service. If any one of us fails in his mission of service, we fail completely. The mere existence of this symposium, on what might have seemed a hopelessly specialized topic just a few years ago, is a tribute. not only to technological progress, but to the growing awareness of our interdependence.
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