There has been considerable growth in sophistication in the IR research community recently regarding new studies which attempt to establish some solid facts about how scientists really seek, find, and utilize informa-tion at various stages of their careers and during various phases of the development of their projects. The early assumption that the primary mission would be accomplished if the predominantly relevant published articles pertaining to an investigator's immediate project were made easily available has been altered considerably. Due to the considerable delay in reporting and dissemination in appropriate journals, the lack of proper addressing through inadequate indexing and classification, the inadequate comprehensive coverage in serial abstracts and reviews, it is apparent that othyr methods must be found to help the investigator in his primary task.
It is a sad commentary that chance may playa large role in an important article becoming publicly visible. Much could and should be said about the central importance of critical reviews written by the best people
avail-able, as found in Germany and the U.S.S.R., but even here the bias of the reviewer may playa vital role and steps must be taken to build in devices to protect against the loss of significant contributions. I
A most significant advance came about when IR investigators became aware that beyond the technological and logical problems of IR proper was the problem of the type of questions which were being proposed to the IR system. Kent, Swets, Swanson and Clapp have each examined the techniques which partially solve the problem of obtaining data from a record in answer to a particular request. 4,6a,15,16 Kent is presenting at this conference his proposal called "The Information Retrieval Game," which should arouse considerable interest.6c Clapp proposes "Associative Chain-ing as an Information Retrieval Technique," which also has merit in re-gard to the vexing question of what a request for information may really mean in depth. He finds that in some situations, "the answer to a query is not a single item but a collection of items organized on the basis of the original question." While not proposed as the ultimate IR method, he sug-gests that it is a useful "step in another direction, which will bring us closer to our ultimate goal-the design and construction of wide class useful information retrieval systems."4 While the report I have does not present the terminal results, the success to the date of publication (N
0-vember 1963) convince him that the chaining concept-"that answers to a query must be constructed from several items so as to span the question -will eventually be incorporated into the next generation retrieval sys-tems.,,4
Kent's examinations of the basic assumptions go much deeper into the individual ways of perceiving nature, or into the paradigms which each of us has as "fundamental hypotheses or models in respect to which think-ing occurs. As in all perception, a shift from one hypothesis to another may occur at any moment, and unpredictably.6c The provisions for handling surprise, novelty, and even the "irrational" as an anticipated part of the work to be done by the system, is in itself an innovation.
This examination and statement of the nature of the requestor's hypoth-esis is more in line with biological models and is deserving of serious attention. I do not know without direct experimental experience whether the "game-theory" technique will prove useful in long term exploration, but believe that trials in appropriate areas of IR activities will be worth-while because there may be relatively delimited sequences which can be studied with considerable benefit. The weakness of most game-theory models, as you know, is that new postulates or rules of the game must be written to provide for new contingencies, and some operations become too complex for such analysis.
The views cited above are consonant with the position taken by Kessler and his colleagues at the Lincoln Laboratory,
EXPRESSED AND UNEXPRESSED NEEDS 81 that the evaluation of new ideas and components must be made in a system en-vironment and not in terms of parameters unique to each component. For this reason it is important to develop a measure or estimate of "system goodness" or figure of merit. . . . A distinction is made between scientific message units and their mode of propagation. The message units (scientific talks and papers) are considered adequate for their functions, but they are encountering increasing losses and delays in propagation .... Valid directional indexing should be sought in the operational history of the author and the intended reader .... A scientific paper is a reflection of the operational history prior to publication. We now ex-tend this concept and say that a scientist's information needs are also determined by his operational background.7
He suggests deriving an index of a consumer's information needs from ex-tensive examination of the scientist's work habits, publications and his own statements concerning these components.
I regret that my limited acquaintance with the field as well as limited time prevent me from citing other relevant authors on this theme. Al-though a significant number of my references are only one year old, and most of them have been published within 3-4 years, I suspect that I am not quite up-to-date in this wonderful field with its unusual acceleration.
I believe in the exploratory value of the natural history method and the clinical case method which have served us so well in the pioneering stages of several disciplines, and would therefore suggest that much more use be made of the autobiographical methods to determine the working habits of scientists. Very few men can write well about themselves, and certainly not in depth. Perhaps St. Augustine and Pascal deserve special accolades because almost alone they came close to revealing clearly some of their motivation, whereas even such a braggart as Benvenuto Cellini missed genuine insights. However, if responsible scientists worked systematically collecting freely written autobiographies focussing on attitudes and work patterns as well as developing questionnaires and other measures, there would become available rich source material and insights for designing new experiments. As a psychoanalyst, I must add that much about any man cannot be written, e.g., Freud's own "interpretations" of his own dreams.
THE CHALLENGE TO THE INFORMA TION SPECIALIST
There is no substitute for the exercise of intelligence in controlled ex-perimentation or research scholarship. Computers and IR systems can only do what they are programmed to do and are no substitute at this time for personal mastery of scientific material or creativity. However, IR sys-tems conceivably can be designed and implemented for a more intimate
interaction between living men who are biological organisms and the computers and systems in such ways that the ends and not the means will be paramount. 13 Instead of merely purveying facts accurately, quickly and at low cost per bit, information specialists should take their built-in, intrinsic, proper place in the scientific and total academic community so that they may participate in every phase of the scientific or humanistic process from its early beginnings to accomplishment. As a biologist and former engineer who is interested in thinking about thinking, it seems inevitable that information scientists should be able to help create a worldwide intellectual and social climate through active participation and leadership in the scientific and other academic communities not only through research, but by being educators who influence profoundly those around them in all departments of the University and the community at large, including industry, government, and the world of affairs.
It seems entirely feasible to a biologist who subscribes to a belief in cultural evolution, that information specialists should be leaders in the effort to enhance man's intellectual powers through the use of prostheses or tools which are extensions of himself. Few can doubt that we have gained considerably in our ability to abstract much better and manipulate propositions more quickly in the approximately one million years of our existence as Homo sapiens, through the development of language-i.e., communication systems. It is a legitimate expectation that in an improved intellectual climate, with better mastery of our material, the talented men of the future will be able to achieve somewhat higher orders of abstraction in a framework of improved logics in many fields. We have now a re-markable example in physics, and we can hope that a similar epoch will emerge in the behavioral sciences.
CONCLUSIONS
1. Information retrieval is an intellectual and not merely a mechanical operation. Its ultimate goal is to help to provide that creative leisure for talented men which will be of greatest benefit to the total com-munity.
2. Research in IR methods which take into account psychological and sociocultural factors of experimentalists, authors, processors of in-formation and users at all stages of their careers and of their projects, is urgently needed.
3. The members of individual disciplines must take a much greater interest in helping the IR experts design systems. Scientists cannot expect good results based upon abstract designs with little or no research on user needs. Multiple research centers for IR systems
EXPRESSED AND UNEXPRESSED NEEDS 83 with private and local, as well as Federal grants, are desirable to provide the diversity needed.
4. Manpower rather than technology will probably be the limiting factor in designing and maintaining genuinely useful IR systems, even in 1999. Furthermore, we urgently need more IR specialists now, who have a reasonable mastery of a particular field, to do re-search, design and help operate new indexing systems, promote better abstracting which may prove to be the second biggest need after good indexing, and assist all publishing channels to do a better job using the newer concepts expressed at this conference. It would seem reasonable that all large professional organizations organized around disciplines with professional journals, should attract IR specialists with the equivalent of a doctoral training in the discipline to help the editors and the membership to take advantage of the newer IR concepts and technology. Since both the material and the IR methods will alter significantly in the next few decades this should be an ongoing process.
5. Information specialists should take their proper place in the aca-demic community as investigators, scholars and educators in the teaching-learning process, and establish balanced programs in which technology and the human components each have their appropriate functions.
REFERENCES
1. American Psychological Association, Reports of, Project on Scientific In-formation Exchange in Psychology, Vol. 1, Washington, D. C. (1963).
2. Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, Inc., "Research on Concepts and Problems of Libraries of the Future," Final Report to The Council on Library Resources, No. 1101, Cambridge, Mass. (November 1963).
3. Broadbent, D. E., Perception and Communication (Pergamon, 1958).
4. Clapp, L. C., "Associative Chaining as an Information Retrieval Technique,"
Report No. 1079, to The Council on Library Resources, Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, Inc., Cambridge, Mass. (1963).
5. Crawford, J. H., "Scientific and Technological Communication in Govern-ment," Report on Scientific and Technological (STINFO) Activities to Dr.
J. B. Wiesner, Special Assistant to the President, U.S. Department of Com-merce, Office of Technical Services, AD299545, Washington, D. C. (No date given but became available in 1962.)
5a. International Conference on Scientific Information, 2 vols., National Academy of Science-National Research Council, Washington, D. C. (1959).
6. (a) Kent, A., Information Retrieval and Machine Translation (Interscience, 1960); (b) Kent, A., Textbook on Mechanized Information Retrieval (Wiley,
1962); (c) Kent, A., "The Information Retrieval Game," chap. 25, this volume.
7. Kessler, M. M., "An Experimental Communication Center for Scientific and Technical Information," MIT, Lincoln Laboratory, No.4 G-0002, Lexington, Mass. (March 31, 1960).
8. Law, A. G., and Richman, A., "Processing Psychiatric Research Data," Data Processing for Science and Engineering ( Jan. - Feb. 1964).
9. Miller, J. G., "The Individual as an Information Processing System," in W. S. Fields and W. Abbott (eds.), Information Storage and Neural Control (Thomas, 1963).
10. National Conference on Social Welfare, "KWIC Index to NCSW Publica-tions," 1924-1962, Ford Associates, Columbus, Ohio (1964).
11. Psychopharmacology Abstracts, vol. 1, 1961, Philadelphia, prepared by Medical Literature, Inc. for Psychopharmacology Service Center, U.S.
N.I.M.H., Bethesda. (Last issue published, vol. 2, no. 12, December 1962, which appeared in mid-1964; index for 1962 not published; no 1963 issues have appeared.)
12. Quastler, H., in Human Performance in Information Transmission, U. of Illinois Report No. R-62, 1955.
13. Richmond, P.A., "What Are We Looking For?" Science, vol. 139, no. 3556 (1963), pp. 737-739.
14. Rowe, J. H., "Library Problems in the Teaching of Anthropology," in David G. Mandelbaum et al. (eds.), Resources for the Teaching of Anthropology (U. of California Press, 1963), pp. 69-70.
15. Swanson, D. R., "Searching Natural Language Text by Computer," Science, vol. 132, no. 3434 (1960), pp. 1099-1104.
16. Swets, J. A., "Information Retrieval Systems," Science, vol. 141, no. 3577 (1963), pp. 245-250.
17. Terry, L. L., "Surgeon General's Conference on Health Communications,"
Nov. 5-8, 1962 (Washington, D. C., U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service (February 1963).
18. Visscher, M. B., "Communications Problems in Biomedical Research,"
NAS-NRC, Washington, D. C. (Oct. 31, 1963). Contains an excellent 285-item bibliography.
19. Weinberg, A. M., "Science, Government and Information," a report of the President's Science Advisory Committee, The White House, Jan. 10, 1963 (Washington, D. C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963).