Mareb 1B52
WALTER J. MURPHY, EDITOR
For a Second Look new feature makes ita debut with this issue INDUSTRIAL r n ENGINEERINQCHEMISTRY. It is the Advertised Products Index, and it appears on the yellow pagea just inside the back cover. The fourpage Industrid Data feature also has been shifted back to that position. As a result, the reader will find that these six pagea comprise a selected, organized summary of the commercial technical information available from the organhtions serving the chemical process field. Since about four out of five of I&EC’s readers report that they read and use the advertisii page, we expect that our “yellow section” of commercial information will be well read. The @senti& of the Advertised Products I n d a are obvious. However, we have pointed the feature toward certain definite objectives that are worth specifying here. The major ones are:
A of
NOTHER
a
1. To eatablkh a reference guide to the advertisements in =.given issue. 2. To make the index easy to use. 3. To provide a convenient reader inquiry service.
,
The basic function of most advertisements is to catch the reader’s eye, to make a point that he did not already know, or to repeat a point that would interest and impress him. Advertisements rue a valued medium of communication in announcing the availability of new or improved products, new applications, or new services. They stimulate the reader into considering new ways to solve his problems, or show him that better ways may exist to carry on his operations. I&EC is a technical journal that has a long life on the average subscriber’s boobhelf-about 80 per cent are kept indefinitely. Furthermore, about 65 per cent of our subscribers keep the journsl as unbound copies, so the advertisements are kept along with the technical articles. The advertisements in ow magazine thus have a much longer “life expectancy” than is true of those appearing in many other magazines. Many of these other publications emphasize new8 or trade activities that have only limited reference value after a few weeks or months have passed. A much smaller fraction of these magazines are still in the subscriber’s bookcase six, nine, and twelve months after receipt. But while the majority of I&EC’s subscribers keep their copies, including the advertisements, the sheer
bulk of the advertisements in the year’s twelve issues poses a substantial barrier. As the subscriber refers to an earlier issue he will see the ads, but without some organized approach he faces quite a chore in locating a particular advertisement he may have recalled seeing earlier. Yet he may have a real need to find it, espe cially if it describes a new product that hss & yek appeared in catalogs and similar references. An index to advertised products makes paasible a second and very important function for our advertising pages. It makes the advertisements a much more e5cient reference source. In designing the Advertised Products Index we have kept it short. We have also classified the Index into about six major subject sections. The objective is a listing so organized that an interested d e r can quickly scan the pertinent sections, or even the whole Index. We hope I&EC’sreaders will find this an efficient procedure when they are searching for a particular item. To obtain this desirable brevity we have limited the number of index entries to a maximum of three for a given advertisement. We visualize the index to be essentially a tool for narrowing down the pasaible source of desired information from the many pages of advertising in a given issue to a few pages. Likewise, no attempt is made to pin-point the subject matter of a given advertisement. Instead, an ad’s index claasifioation is given in broad enough terms to include the range of subjects the ad covers. For the convenience of our readers, we have broadened our “readers service” inquiry pastcard t o include the advertisements. However, it is obviously impw sible to present a short, broad%&@index simultaneously with au extremely spec& inquiry card. The inquiry card will work well where an advertisement describes a single product or offem one specific bulletin or pamphlet. Ads that describe a variety of products w ill still require the letter of inquiry when the inquirer is interested in only one or two of the items mentioned. Those who have kept up with recent changes in INDUSTRIAL rn FXGINEERINQ CHEMISTRY will immediately recognize the editorial motivation behind this new feature. We are providing one more contour map for the searcher, this time in the oft-neglected area of technical advertisements. We hope you can find good use for it.
441
