My background and interests are those of the biomedical and the be-havioral sciences communities. Since I have no formal experiments or surveys to report, I will report discussions and experiences utilizing the clinical case (anecdotal reports) or natural history methods.
There is no need to review here the still unmatched potentials of the human organism, with its 1010 elements in the central nervous system, both physiologic and psychologic as a receiver, storer and coder-decoder of information, for this has been done by Quastler (1955), Broadbent
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(1958), and Miller (1963), among others.3,9,12 Not only is it the largest sys-tem known to us, but it is the most flexible, and the utilization of these properties is the central theme of my essay. By sound planning, in accord-ance with evolutionary and educational concepts, we must develop experts who will help the scientific community gradually learn how to react more intimately with the various machines which are becoming available. But even after we have consoles in our home studies or talking typewriters which learn to help us correct our errors, we will probably have need for human intermediaries at some stages of the process. Since many of these consoles will probably not be generally available for the behavioral sci-ences for several decades, many of us would hope that, in addition to and not in place of, there will be careful research planning about improving IR systems with resources now becoming available. We can do better work in spite of the inevitable cultural lag, and the fact that current guesses are not as convincing as well-controlled experimental studies or high-level logical studies of abstract systems. As you know, the problems of information retrieval in the behavioral sciences are in some ways more acute than in the physical. Rapidly developing subject matter, new sub-ject areas, and new interdisciplinary needs make identification of author and information processor responsibilities much more difficult, for the needs of users become more complex and elusive, while the material be-comes more widespread over several disciplines and more difficult to iden-tify. Changing concepts and nomenclature increase the Gomplexities.
This is not to minimize the numerous technical problems in designing appropriate hardware, nor the logical problems involved in making the IR systems maximally effective. Most investigators and scholars, both as producers and users, would welcome the new massive instrumentation.
However, there are many who have grave doubts about the assumption that the most internal problems of an information center or library would be satisfactorily solved if modern computer techniques now available would be installed. Good service may not be as easily purchased as com-puters. Quantity is not enough, and effective methods of selection must be found if instruments are to be useful. Capacity, speed, and other tech-nical problems are not the limiting problems for handling the 1014 char-acters calculated to be the total sum we need to automate. It is another task to provide essential information as needed in appropriate forms to investigators, scholars, teachers and students, each with his own needs, both formal and idiosyncratic. If time permitted it would be worthwhile to delineate the differences in need of each of these categories at different stages of the career of the person and also of his project. I would support the claim of the active investigator for the highest priorities in designing IR systems. However, it is the experienced investigator who has already
EXPRESSED AND UNEXPRESSED NEEDS 77 developed a reasonably good system for his own purposes, often depend-ing upon the infornal channels for current information, as shown by the APA studies (1963), who has the least need for a new system. I The in-experienced investigator, and the interdisciplinary scholar, teacher, and student have much more complex needs which are not easily met. It is from these areas that approaches to "unexpressed needs" become obvious from autobiographic accounts.
One citation from the field of anthropology, which is representative of much that we need to correct in all of the behavioral sciences, including psychology and psychiatry, will tell the story.
Each subject has its own peculiar library problems, and anthropology has some especially serious ones. In the first place, the systems of organization used in most general libraries in the United States make it exceptionally difficult for anthropologists to find the literature of their field.... [These systems] were devised and put into practice many years ago when anthropology was generally visualized as a very small subject, and its point of view was familiar to few read-ers. The result is that traditionally and in current practice books which are writ-ten from the comparative point of view are catalogued and shelved with books which are not, because of some similarity in subject matter discussed. In most general libraries the literature of anthropology is scattered from religion and philosophy to warfare and marine transportation. This situation may have the advantage of calling the attention of an occasional reader from another field to anthropological contributions related to his interest, but it creates undeniable difficulties for anthropology students . . . . Most libraries use subject headings of the Library of Congress, because these headings are printed on Library of Con-gress catalog cards and are also available in a bulky manual. Unfortunately, Library of Congress subject headings are designed to help the "general reader"
who knows no anthropology, and the categories which are familiar to students are either not represented at all or appear under unfamiliar names.14
It is undoubtedly redundant before this highly informed group to spend more time on the current inadequacies of indexing, classifying, abstracting and cataloging which are only too well known to all. However, I will mention a few which can furnish us with lessons for the future, the most pressing of which seems to me to be the need for subject specialists as catalogers. The Library of Congress places a book by a psychiatrist, Paul Federn, entitled Ego Psychology and the Psychoses, under the subject heading "egoism," and the subject cataloging is accepted by university library catalogs across the United States. For most practical purposes, it is lost to professional workers under this heading. I am happy to say that most psychological writings are better indexed via Psychological Abstracts than those in other behavioral sciences, but it will take much workmanlike skill and many years to correct the current situation. I find
amusing the summary by Hans Peter Luhn, a leader in the field of in-formation retrieval by computers, who "remarked, on looking over rough versions of the figure (of public dissemination), that the contemporary information retrieval approach was like sending stale bread to China via air express."1 This is said about the field of psychology where the public dissemination is probably superior in the sense that a larger portion reaches more interested persons, and faster, than in other behavioral sciences where a three-year lag is all too common.
Many of you may have been led to believe that the MEDLARS System utilizing the National Library of Medicine's new Medical Subject Head-ings (3d ed., January 1964) would solve many of the old problems. It has distinct advantages for the older, conventional medical areas, but is a great disappointment to those in the biomedical community who require information in the other behavioral sciences. The problem is a complex one to which there are no easy answers. It may be argued that there should be a separate "Index Psychologicus": There is good evidence cur-rently that under the leadership of Dr. Martin Cummings of the National Library of Medicine, much hard work is now being done to improve the retrieval potential of existing systems for the behavioral sciences.
PROBLEMS IN INDEXING, CLASSIFICATION AND CROSS-REFERENCING
Some critics claim that basically it is not feasible for any system of sub-ject headings to be really satisfactory and propose such new techniques as the KWIC (Keyword in Context) Index recently used by the National Conference on Social Welfare. 10 This is an automatic coding device or "title permutation indexing" which is a combination of word and machine in-dexing. The total operation is performed automatically and the title and related bibliographic data have been key-punched for use as input by the computer. Titles are amplified by editorial insertion of keywords which help identify the content of the document. 10 This thesis that no system of subject headings can ultimately be satisfactory is supported by the failure of Index Medicus to mention more than a few score key psychiatric con-cepts (with conspicuous omission of those associated with psychoanal-ysis) or to provide coverage of administrative and forensic psychiatry.
It fails to coordinate older subject headings, such as "mania," with proper cross-references. Furthermore, there is persistent confusion of terms from psychosomatic medicine with those of conversion hysteria, and similar misunderstanding of the new use of old words, or attempts to fit new technical terms under old headings, such as placing "narcissism"
under "egocentricism." There is a failure to link related topics in
psychia-EXPRESSED AND UNpsychia-EXPRESSED NEEDS 79 try, or to link areas such as psychosomatic medicine with appropriate headings in the autonomic nervous system. "Psychoanalytic interpreta-tion" is a heading used to cover a wide variety of subjects from history, literature, biography, to clinical work and dream interpretation. The failure to make appropriate linkages prevents the highly desirable dis-semination of significant and relevant experiments from neuroanatomy, biochemistry, neurophysiology, clinical neurology and allied disciplines to psychiatrists, psychologists, and other behavioral scientists and vice versa. It also delays transmission of vital findings from the basic scien-tists to practicing clinicians and vice versa, where the analogy between basic scientists to engineers may occasionally be useful. Here is another approach to the problem of exploring for and identifying "unexpressed needs."
Another example of the failure of current IR systems at a higher level of abstraction may be seen in drug evaluation. Only gradually are work-ers in the field of evaluation of drugs with human subjects becoming aware of the manifold difficulties in establishing genuinely useful "con-trol" series, even though the placebo phenomenon has been known since Hippocrates and the bibliographic coverage is somewhat better than any field in psychiatry. II The tragedy of thalidomide is a good example of the cost of delayed transmission. Here is a good example of an unexpressed need due to traditional thinking and attitudes but many similar examples could be found in the well known diseases.