APRIL. 1949
THE ACADEMIC WILLIAM F. HEWITT, JR. Howard University School of Medicine, Washington, D. C.
Tm
teacher or laboratory scientist cannot fulfill completely and simultaneously his classroom or bench responsibilities and the imperative of familiarity with reports of advances in his field and those related to it. Data accumulate so rapidly that, as in agriculture, large portions of bumper crops frequently rot unharvested for want of workers to collect, process, and dist.ribute them. The Cambridge Branch of the (British) Association of Scientific Workers sponsored a discussion last autumn of means whereby efficient science information service might be assured (I). At that conference Professor R. S. Hutton stated that there are about 15,000 worth-while scientific periodicals in which appear annually about 750,000 original papers. Of these, about one-third are abstracted. Chemistry, ". . . the most thoroughly abstracted branch of science," accounts for a great number of the abstracts. More than 5,000,000 hooks-over one-third of all those published since the invention of printing from movable type-appeared in the years 1900-40. Under the double deluge of books and periodicals, the scholarly Presented before the Division of Chemical Education a t the 114th meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, D. C., August, 1948. 1
libraries of this country have doubled in size every 16 years in recent decades (B), the doubling-period decreasing progressively. The growth in volume of scientific literature is estimated a t 5 Der cent . Der vear "
(8).
The Royal Society Scientific Information Conference, July, 1948, took the position that
... ...
anything which contributes to the freedom and ease of communication among scientists is, per se, a contribution to sciwe must expect inferior science from those who cannot ence work at the great research c e n t w until mechanisms are developed to insure that every scientist, no matter where he may be, may have access to the recorded record of science to the full extent to which it can contribute to his investigations.
The reference librarian, of varying degree of sophistication in science, has been for centuries the major or only specialist devoting full time to ordering and canalizing the informational avalanche. Librarians know that they need more scientific training. The reference librarian a t this university, for example, said recently (6): It is becoming a thing of the past to say that special librarians need Librrtrianship most and a, general acquaintance with techniWe must. within this eeneration. cal and scientific terms. attract more people who have done workin zoology, b&eriolagy;
. ..
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
Conference (57, journals would be less smollen and puhlication more rapid if scientists were better authors, and The librarians know that they need to know more if they knew how to find information (assuming greater science; is there a corresponding concern, on the part accessibility of the latter). Teaching scientists how to of scientists, to learn the technology of communica- find and use information-at the beginning of nndertions? At a recent meeting of the Expert Committee on graduate study, again in early postgraduate work, and Scientific Abstracting, of the Interim Committee on again as necessary during their professional careersMedical and Biological Abstracting, Division of Natural was a large segment of the Conference's recommendations. In large organizations such instruction would be Sciences, UNESCO, done by publication advisors, information officers, and I t was pointed out that librarians and documentalistr have other special-service units or persons. hitherto been those chiefly concerned over the absbracting sibuaLiterature-science groups in industry and governtion, while the scientists themsolves have, to a great extent! ignored it,. Many present expressed t,he opinion that conditmns ment have been expected to free the bench scientist for have now beeoms so ehaot,ic that seienti~tswill be compelled to laboratory work, to improve form and content of intraaid in seeking some solution (6). and extramurally published reports, and to facilitate The appearance in the Division of Chemical Educa- the flow of ideas and their effective promotion within tion of the Chemical Literature Group, now in process the organization. Academic organizations, foundaof becoming a new Division of the American Chemical tions, and other nongovernment, nonprofit bodies also Society, marks a long step forward in world science might benefit from the realization of these objectives. communications. Recognition of the Division may The academic literature-science unit might undertake a mark also the emergence of professional status, among fourth function as well: the training of literature scienhis bench-minded colleagues, of the literature scientist. tists for the needs of all types of organizations. LiteraHolmstrom's viewpoint may become more common re- ture-science instruction needs standardization and curgarding the ". . . importance--equal to that of the actual ricularization, and on-the-job education very well might experimenters-of those concerned with editing, dis- be recognized and to some extent regulated, as through seminati~i~, abstracting, and indexing scientific papers, an internship program. Neither scientists' nor lihraand whose function is to harmonize different lines of rians' schools now offer such training. Returns from a questionnaire sent to 169 members of research (7)." the staffs of liberal arts, graduate, and professional The following are the duties of a single person, neither units of this university indicate: (1) considerable debench scientist nor librarian, who heads the Library, Editorial and Information Section, Medical Division, mand for a t least the 26 service, teaching, and research activities listed thereon, which are not carried on here Army Chemical Center (8): but are possible throngh the forming of a literatnreMaking literary searches and furnishing information. . . . science group; (2) willingness to contribute a wide Compiling and coordinating dats and preparing snswers t o correspondence requesting information relative t,o various research variety of professional-level assistance to such a joint activities. Surveying all literature coming from other research undertaking; and (3) desire for more information conorganizations and preparing critical summaries of data . . . 6s cerning literature science in general and many of its related t o . . . i t e m of interest to research investigators. Obtains operations specifically. copies of reports that might he of value to research personnel and The existence of an academic literature-science maintains files of such reports for circulation. Preparing weekly bibliography. Ststistieally analyzing and evaluating chemioal, group such as has been sketchily proposed above is not physical and physiological data obtained in course of experi- known to the author who invites suggestions and other ments . . . for purpose of determining the volume of experimenta- correspondence.
chemistry, physiology, compai.ativr~ mstomy, embryology, mathematics, and physica.
tion and percentage of results necessary to secure a valid conalusion. . . Preparing periodic and special reports on progress and accomplishments of research. . . . Attending and reporting on meetings of scientific associations. . .
.
.
I t may be superflous to emphasize that the post described is not that of librarian. In a recent "Situations Open" advertisement in Chem. Eng. News (9), however, the Armour Research Foundation thought i t necessary to warn the reader that the opening in literature research ". . . .is not to he confused with that of librarian. We desire chemist or chemical engineer who uses the library as a research tool." According to the Royal Society Scientific Information
LITERATURE CITED (1) Nature (London), 160, 649 (1947) (news item). R. B., "Union Catalogs in the United States," p. 82 (2) DOWNS, (1942). (Cited by L. KAPUN, Bull. Amw. Assoc. Univ. Prof., 32, 632 (1946).) (3) Chem. Eng. N m , 26,2432 (1948) (news item). (4) SHAW,R. R., Science, 10, 148 (1948). (5) TUGQLE,B. M., Bela Kappa ChiBull., 6.11 (1948). E. R.,Science, 108, 8 (1948). (6) CUNNINQHAM, (7) HOLMSTROM, J. E., Endeauour, 7 , 40 (1948). (8) DILL, D . B. (Scientific Direotor, Medical Division, Army Chemical Center, Maryland), personal communication, Mar. 1, 1948. (9) Chem. Eng. News, 26, 2103 (1948).
