College and Research Libraries


Review Articles 
Trends in Documentation 
Modern Trends in Documentation; Proceed-

ings of a Symposium held at the Univer-
sity of Southern California, April 1958. 
Ed. by M a r t h a Boaz. New York: Perga-
mon Press, 1959. viii, 103p. $5.00. 

T h e symposium reported in this modest 
volume represents an a t t e m p t by the School 
of Library Science of the University of 
Southern California to stimulate interest in 
i n f o r m a t i o n retrieval, which is one aspect of 
documentation. T h e program consisted of 
three general presentations on the p l a n n i n g , 
nature, a n d needs of i n f o r m a t i o n retrieval; 
two reports on machine translation; three 
outlines of i n f o r m a t i o n retrieval systems 
utilizing computers; two descriptions of elec-
tronic devices a n d their uses; and, finally, 
a short p a n e l discussion. 

T h e symposium opened with a discussion 
by R o b e r t Meyer of the needs of the user of 
information, largely in terms of the user in 
the special library. T h i s was followed by 
papers of H . J . R. Grosch (IBM) and Mer-
ritt Kastens (Stanford Research Institute), 
clearly setting forth the objectives of infor-
mation retrieval. All three presentations 
were very explicit as to the type of informa-
tion needed by the scientific a n d technical 
specialist, including e x p l a n a t i o n of the kind 
of occasion calling for speed, which has been 
one of the primary factors in attempts at 
mechanization of the information-finding 
processes. It should be emphasized that the 
approach to knowledge represented in the 
machine methods discussed by these speakers 
was essentially a subject one. 

T h e machine translation section of the 
conference, covered by H . P. E d m u n d s o n 
a n d D. G. Hays of the R a n d Corporation, 
formed a very lucid introduction to the sub-
ject. T h o s e who a t t e n d e d the symposium 
must have been well p r e p a r e d to tackle the 
papers o n mechanical translation in the pre-
prints sent o u t for the I n t e r n a t i o n a l Con-
ference on Scientific I n f o r m a t i o n held seven 
m o n t h s later. All of the terms used to de-
scribe the machine translation procedures 
have been explained for the layman. 

D u r i n g the symposium, three i n f o r m a t i o n 
retrieval systems were described by H . P. 
L u h n (IBM), D o n Andrews (U. S. P a t e n t 
Office), a n d Harley T i l l e t t (U. S. Naval Ord-
nance T e s t Station, China Lake, Calif.). 
T h e s e showed how machines designed for 
mathematical purposes could be utilized to 
find certain types of i n f o r m a t i o n . I n all 
three cases the organization of knowledge 
was rearranged to fit the computer. L u h n ' s 
"auto-encoding" of documents is an inter-
esting system. "Auto-encoding" is a subject-
entry method based o n the choice of key 
words whose importance is determined by 
their statistical frequency in the documents 
analyzed. T h e weakness of the method for 
broader application lies in the fact that 
many authors, for aesthetic reasons, delib-
erately try not to use the same m a j o r sub-
ject word twice in close proximity, prefer-
ring as many synonyms as feasible to avoid 
annoying the reader with constant repeti-
tion. W i t h o u t a very fancy thesaurus, this 
would tend to spoil the statistical averages 
a n d make all key words of equal value. Til-
lett's p a p e r mentioned some psychological 
factors affecting the adoption of machine 
methods for information searching. T h e s e 
factors, notably d i s a p p o i n t m e n t that the ma-
chine was so slow a n d that it could not do 
everything for the client, could be overcome 
by educating the user not to ask a machine 
a question that could be answered better 
with a dictionary catalog, or, in this case, 
the Uniterms system; a n d also by constantly 
r e m i n d i n g the client that any machine is 
a mechanical moron created to perform tedi-
ous or repetitious tasks, b u t not to d o any-
thing r e q u i r i n g m u c h intelligence. 

N o i n f o r m a t i o n systems were described of 
the type which utilize machines specifically 
for bibliographic r a t h e r that mathematical 
or statistical purposes, such as semantic fac-
toring a n d the Western Reserve Searching 
Selector. However, general features of sev-
eral machines for i n f o r m a t i o n retrieval were 
presented by Peter Worsley (Benson-Leh-
ner), who described a kind of R a p i d Selector 
called FLIP, a n d by R o b e r t Hayes (Mag-
navox), who described Minicards a n d Mag-
nacards, both of which are entirely different 

M A R C H 1 9 6 0 177 



in design a n d operation from computers. 
T h e panel discussion at the e n d of the 

Symposium revealed the extent to which its 
objectives were achieved or missed. Appar-
ently the term " d o c u m e n t a t i o n " was not 
defined at the beginning, for one finds ref-
erence among the comments of the panelists 
(p. 89) to an article of H a r r y Bauer in which 
d o c u m e n t a t i o n has been described as a 
means of organizing files of letters a n d 
pamphlet-like material, a misconception al-
most as common as the one which defines 
d o c u m e n t a t i o n primarily in terms of the care 
a n d feeding of data-processing machines. 
T h e field of d o c u m e n t a t i o n is much broader 
than either of these views. A " d o c u m e n t " is 
any m e d i u m c o n t a i n i n g recorded evidence 
of intellectual endeavor. " D o c u m e n t a t i o n " 
is used in the narrow sense by historians to 
mean the process of citing written evidence 
to substantiate a statement of fact a n d also 
as the n a m e for such evidence. T h e word 
is used in the broad sense by those working 
with collections of data, or i n f o r m a t i o n of 
any kind, to mean any process connected 
with the "identification, recording, organiza-
tion, storage, recall, conversion i n t o more 
useful forms, synthesis, a n d dissemination of 
the intellectual content of p r i n t or any other 
recorded m a t e r i a l s . " 1 T h e d u a l m e a n i n g of 
the word " d o c u m e n t a t i o n " is q u i t e clear if 
one remembers that a historian will accept 
the fact that a decisive battle was fought at 
Hastings in 1066, b u t will insist on "docu-
m e n t i n g " a statement that victory in this 
battle was influenced by the ability of heav-
ily armored N o r m a n knights to fight on 
horseback, because they rode a new breed 
of horses large e n o u g h to s u p p o r t a knight 
in full armor, while t h e English rode to the 
battle field on small horses, then had to 
dismount a n d fight on foot. T h e document-
alist, on the other h a n d , will treat bat-
tle, place, date, English knights, N o r m a n 
knights, infantry, cavalry, full armor, light 
armor, big horses, a n d little horses impar-
tially as " i n f o r m a t i o n " to be processed, 
stored, a n d recovered. T h e reasoning of the 
historian, t h e thesis for which he had to cite 
chapter a n d verse, will only find its way into 
this body of i n f o r m a t i o n through the fur-
ther addition of some generalized subject 
headings, such as "tactics," "military art and 

1 R a l p h R. S h a w , " D o c u m e n t a t i o n : C o m p l e t e Cycle 
of I n f o r m a t i o n S e r v i c e , " CRL, X V I I I ( 1 9 5 7 ) , 452. 
( I t a l i c s a r e t h e r e v i e w e r ' s ) . 

science," "military history, medieval," or 
"armies—equipment." Incidentally, this ex-
ample points u p a n o t h e r problem in L u h n ' s 
"auto-encoding": the significant ideas or 
conclusions in a d o c u m e n t are not neces-
sarily expressed in precise terms suitable for 
storage a n d retrieval, while the wordy argu-
ment used in establishing them may not be 
worth preserving. ( T h e example given here 
is the late Carl Stephenson's Big Horse T h e -
ory of the Battle of Hastings.) 

If the m e a n i n g of " d o c u m e n t a t i o n " was 
not made clear to the librarians on the 
panel of the symposium, it is also obvious 
that the necessities of library work were 
equally vague to the machine a n d system 
makers present. At one p o i n t (pp. 96-97) it 
was suggested that it is the job of the 
" m o t h e r " professional organization in the 
library world (presumably ALA) to formu-
late a set of standards for mechanization. 
T h i s idea seems to crop u p in one form or 
a n o t h e r at every d o c u m e n t a t i o n conference. 
It might have a chance of b e i n g adopted if 
there were somewhere a plain statement of 
exactly what the machines can a n d cannot 
do similar to the b e g i n n i n g made by Claire 
K. Schultz at the recent meeting of the 
American D o c u m e n t a t i o n Institute. It also 
might be acted u p o n if there were some in-
dication of interest in p r o d u c i n g a kind of 
machine that would fit library procedures, 
rather than d e m a n d i n g that these experi-
ence-tested processes be t u r n e d upside down 
to fit a machine designed for a counting-
house. Actually, there are some routines 
which could be mechanized right now. For 
example, the practicing cataloger who does 
original cataloging could use something in 
the line of mechanical subject i n d e x i n g to 
do these things: (1) take the raw terms which 
describe the subject matter of the book in 
h a n d , compare these with the standardized 
list of subject headings, a n d convert raw 
terms i n t o the equivalent standardized 
forms; (2) take the title (or subtitle or sup-
plied title) of the book as representative of 
its topic, together with the standardized 
subject heading most nearly descriptive of 
this topic, a n d compare with other titles al-
ready listed u n d e r the same h e a d i n g to see 
whether the book being cataloged fits the 
category (if not, the cataloger may either 
try other subject headings t u r n e d u p in step 
(1) or repeat the first process with f u r t h e r 

178 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S 



instructions refining the search among stand-
ardized headings); (3) repeat the same com-
parison a n d checking procedures with the 
classification tables. It might be possible to 
do both the subject heading a n d classifica-
tion comparisons simultaneously. Present 
machines are capable of p e r f o r m i n g this 
kind of look-up and comparison operations. 

D u r i n g the symposium, the information 
needs of the scientific world, at least, were 
very clearly described, a n d a few of the 
imaginative methods which have been made 
by scientists a n d engineers to answer these 
needs were outlined. It is d o u b t f u l that the 
conference did much to end the Great 
Schism between the librarians, who under-
stand the m a g n i t u d e of the information 
storage a n d retrieval problem in its totality, 
a n d the p r o p o n e n t s of mechanization, who 
see only the failures of present systems in 
the highly specialized fields with which they 
are familiar. Dean Boaz a n d the library 
school of the University of Southern Cali-
fornia are to be commended on making a 
sincere effort to open channels of commu-
nication between the two viewpoints.— 
Phyllis A. Richmond, University of Roch-
ester Library. 

Audio-Visual T o o l 
They See What You Mean. By [Eric F. Bur-

tis a n d James E. LeMay] Ozalid Audio-
Visual D e p a r t m e n t . J o h n s o n City, N. Y.: 
Ozalid Division of General Aniline and 
Film Corporation, 1959. 88p., $3.75. 

T h e overhead projector is an audio-visual 
tool that has a p p e a r e d since 1950 a n d made 
its presence felt q u i t e markedly in industrial 
audio-visual departments. It is beginning to 
a p p e a r at technical a n d academic meetings 
as an extension to the services offered by 
the older projection methods. It combines 
the freedom a n d spontaneity of the black-
board with the precision a n d artistry of the 
slide projector, while a d d i n g a n u m b e r of 
facilities not f o u n d in these standard tech-
niques. 

Ozalid does not make overhead projectors, 
b u t it does produce e q u i p m e n t a n d supplies 
used in p r e p a r i n g transparencies for these 
projectors. T h e bulk of this superbly illus-
trated volume deals with the preparation of 
transparencies by the diazo process. T h i s is 

to be expected as Ozalid is the outstanding 
producer of diazo materials in this country. 
Sections of the book are given to homemade 
transparencies, T r a n s f e r o n (diffusion-trans-
fer), transparency m o u n t i n g techniques, 
transparency design, a n d overhead projec-
tion techniques. Much of this m a n u a l could 
be used to improve presentations based on 
the blackboard a n d slide projector, and it 
will certainly add to the versatility of the 
d e p a r t m e n t using an overhead projector. 

T h e r e is a short bibliography at the end 
of the book referring the reader to sixteen 
recent reports on overhead projection. T h e r e 
is also a two-page listing of Ozalid audio-
visual products, which serves as a glossary 
to the many terms savoring of jargon that 
appear in the book. T h e illustrations with 
which the book is filled serve to simplify the 
description of techniques a n d exemplify the 
visual method at its best. T h e profusion of 
trade-names in the text tends to minimize 
the effectiveness of this portion of the book. 
The volume can be recommended for all li-

braries engaged in or about to become in-
volved in audio-visual work.—Hubbard W. 
Ballou, Columbia University Libraries. 

Soviet Publishing 
Publishing in the U.S.S.R. By Boris I. Go-

rokhoff. (Indiana University Publications. 
Slavic and East E u r o p e a n Series, Vol. 19.) 
[Bloomington, Ind.: I n d i a n a University, 
cl959.] xvi, 307 p. $3.00; cloth, $6.00. 

I n spite of the recent burgeoning of arti-
cles about Soviet methods of disseminating 
scientific information there has been a need 
for full length studies in English which 
would give a balanced presentation of Soviet 
libraries, bibliography, a n d publishing in 
general. T h e Council on Library Resources, 
Inc., has acted to fill this need by s u p p o r t i n g 
Paul Horecky's Libraries and Bibliographic 
Centers in the Soviet Union, Volume 16 in 
the I n d i a n a series, a n d its companion vol-
ume on publishing. T o g e t h e r they form a 
valuable survey of the current scene. T h e 
competence in research on Soviet Russia, 
built u p in large measure since W o r l d W a r 
II by the area institutes in American uni-
versities, appears to have been joined hap-
pily with experienced librarianship i n the 
production of these studies. A volume on 

M A R C H 1 9 6 0 179