The Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS) is described in detail including its indexing procedures, vocabulary, search strategies, products and services. This handbook also indicates the types of requests that are suitable for retrospective machine search in MEDLARS, and discusses the capabilities and limitations of the…

The American Institute of Physics is working toward the development of a national information system for physics, whose objective is the organization of the flow of physics information from the producers to the users. The complete physics information system has several constituent subsystems, among which are: one for the management of the flow of…

An invitation to participate in this panel discussion was sent to official representatives of organizations which had an expressed interest in information networks. Since some of the represented international bodies had started preliminary planning for network communication, the discussion was centered around systems design concepts. However, as…

The desirability of increasing the speed of informal communications of information among investigators in well-defined areas of scientific discipline has been well established. The purpose of this study was to develop more advanced media for this type of communication and to determine the overall effect on cost and efficiency on a selected area of…

The Design of Information Systems in the Social Sciences (DISISS) is a research project with the objective of carrying out research necessary for the effective design of information systems in the social sciences, whether by the creation of new systems or the modification of existing systems. This working paper explores the methods available for…

The purposes of this study are to identify and define viable remote browsing techniques and the requirements for an interactive medical information system that would permit the use of such techniques. The main emphasis is in the areas of: (1) remote viewing of page material; and (2) remote interrogation of fact banks with question-answering…

The thesis of this paper is that efficient functioning of a network is dependent upon the organization of bibliographic services so that the basic record for each bibliographic item is created once. This record must be minimally capable of serving the needs of libraries, information centers, abstracting and indexing services, and national and…

Rather than presenting a historical review or an inventory of existing services, both of which are the subject of other papers, interlibrary loan is discussed as part of overall library objectives, and in the context of the provisions of the Interlibrary Loan Code. By discussing two examples of networks in some depth, an attempt is made to arrive…

The primary focus of this paper is on examining the inter-relationship of those parameters which affect the costs associated with various forms of telecommunications services. The basic limitation in the scope of this paper is that cost will be examined primarily in a relative sense rather than on an absolute basis. We feel that a summarization of…

The basic principles of narrow bandwidth telecommunications are treated in a manner understandable to the non-engineer. The comparative characteristics of the various narrow bandwidth communications circuits are examined. Currently available graphics transmission and reception equipment are described and their capabilities and limitations…

New technologies of information handling are going to produce fundamental changes in the social structure. If we accept the statement that the book "upset the educational monopoly of the Church," we inevitably wonder what monopolies may tumble in the electronic wake of the computer. We are not dealing with a simple difference of degree…

The Five Associated University Libraries (FAUL) is an example of a network which is not yet really a network in its own right: it is a free-loader on components of other networks, e.g. NYSILL, national ILL codes, TWX, telephone, UPS, U.S. Mails and the like. In fact, the organization could wake up one day and find all of its objectives met by…

Projections about the growth of the telephone industry from 1970-1985 were made from forecasts of five panels of experts, in five areas: (1) the regulatory environment; (2) changes in U.S. society; (3) existing networks and services; (4) future networks and services; (5) future characteristics of the labor force and employee-management relations.…

A survey of 105 Kentucky and Indiana hospitals was made to determine the extent and quality of library service available under the auspices of the Ohio Valley Regional Medical Program. Summary data on the 60 hospitals with libraries are reported here with the objective of examining the capability of these institutions as a group to participate in…

A model of a generalized information storage and retrieval system is proposed. The model consists of six subsystems (or blocks): logical processor, selector, descriptor, file, locator, document file, and analysis block. These subsystems function in a partial environment defined by the user and data blocks. Proceeding from a verbal description, a…