Question

observation
of automatic machines

Answer 1

FINAL REPORT ON MACHINE 
METHODS FOR INFORMATION SEARCHING

Williamina A. Himwich 
Eugene Garfield 
Helen O. Field 
John M. Whittock 
Sanford V. Larkey*

*The preparation and writing of this report was the responsibility of Mr. Whittock 
and Dr. Larkey, based on the work of all of the authors listed above

WELCH MEDICAL LIBRARY INDEXING PROJECT 
Sponsored by the Armed Forces Medical Library 
The Johns Hopkins University 
Baltimore, Maryland 1955

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1. Introduction

For a number of years there has been a good deal of talk of the possibilities of using machine methods and other techniques to aid in searches through the scientific literature. While some of the ideas were quite speculative and glossed over the many difficult problems involved, there were also many practical studies and applications to certain rather restricted areas. The general picture of this work has been summed up in the Terminal Report ... 1 November 1948 to 31 January 1951 and in the project working paper appended to it, Punched Cards for InformationFiles,Review of the Literature, dated 18 April 1950.

One of the objectives of the Welch Library Project was to study the application of machine methods to the specific problems of medical bibliography. In any such study we must first face the basic questions why do we think of using machine methods for such purposes; are they really necessary; and what do we expect to get from them? These questions are not easy to answer on theoretical grounds or even when we know something of the operating practicabilities of machines. Probably the first consideration in the desire for machine methods is the tremendous extent of periodical literature in the medical sciences and the ensuing difficulty in retrieval of information contained in these periodicals. The extent and nature of these periodicals has been discussed in another Project report, Survey of World Medical Serials and Coverage by Indexing and Abstracting Services.

Another common assumption is that our present indexing and abstracting services are not adequate for the demands of modern scientific research, either as to their coverage of the thousands of periodicals or as to the quality and depth of indexing. It is true that, as was shown in the above Survey, there is a great deal of over-lapping of coverage of some journals but at the same time there is very limited or no coverage of many others. We have also found from our interviews (as contained in the previous Terminal Report) that many scientists are not satisfied with or have difficulties in using our present services. We have pointed out some of the problems of subject indexing, particularly for printed indexes, in the Final Report on Subject Headings and Subject Indexing. But certainly the better of our present indexes and abstract journals would seem to meet the needs of the greater part of medical scientists and before we embark on any large-scale use of machine methods we must find out just what more they could provide and for whom? We need to know a great deal more about what is required in various areas of science, particularly in medical science. It is obvious that the needs of a physician in practice are quite different from those of the man in highly specialized research. There are probably different demands as to thorough literature searches for the more general areas of clinical medicine than for technical and commercial research and development, as in pharmaceutical chemistry. We have a range, then, from the desire for a rather cursory picture of modern developments to the exacting demands of patent searching.

What might we expect from machine methods over and beyond what we can get from current indexing practices, as employed, for instance, by the Current List, The Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus or Chemical Abstracts? First we would want more complete and more detailed indexing and greater correlation of the items of information. Second we would hope for more rapid and more complete retrieval of information. As can be seen, the first is largely in the intellectual realm and depends very little on machines, except insofar as they can accomplish certain aspects of correlation if proper coding has been done. It involves the extension and modification of present indexing practices, adapted, of course, to machine operations, the aim being to furnish the machine with more data than is required for printed indexes and in different ways. The following is an example of what items of information might be coded for machine searching from a given article:

Chemical changes in the brain produced by injury and by anoxia Wm. E. Stone, Clyde Marshall and Leslie F. Nims. Am. J. Physiol. 132: 770-775, 1941".