|
As a statistician, I had the unique opportunity of observing a great deal
of information science research from the early 1960s onwards through statistical
observation, statistical surveys and experimental design. These studies
were performed while I was with Westat, during a short "sabbatical with
Informatics, and at King Research (from 1976). They involved such interesting
areas as evaluating information retrieval systems (U.S. Patent Office,
CIRCOL, APA, NLM Cancerline) and information centers (NTIS, OSTI, DTIC,
ERIC). In the 1970s, my staff and I had the opportunity to describe scientific
communication through a series of NSF studies under the umbrella "Statistical
Indicators of STI Communication". During this time we also performed systems
analysis and development of the International Cancer Research Databank
(including development of Cancerline), editorial processing centers and
electronic publishing, and development of a numeric metadata system for
the U.S. Department of Energy. We performed two studies of the impact of
the 1976 revision to the Copyright Law and a study of the cost-benefit
of copyright formalities. I was also involved is studies of information
professionals and information professional competencies.
Beginning in the early 1980s, Jose-Marie Griffiths and I developed a conceptual framework, methods and measures for assessing the use, usefulness and value of information services and products. We were able to apply our approach to well over 100 libraries of all kinds, multitype library networks across 14 states and several regions. Since most of these studies were proprietary, I have spent much of my retirement aggregating and documenting these results with Jose so the knowledge will not be lost to others. Carol Tenopir and I are also documenting the results of over 20,000 readership surveys and cost studies involving publishers, libraries, and scientists' time. Our intent is to help scientists; librarians and publishers understand one another's participation in scholarly communication and how they should approach the transformation to electronic journals. |
In addition to being able to describe and play a role in the growth of
information science, my fondest memories come from my good fortune to have
worked with so many talented people and to have observed the innovations
and enormous contributions made by so many of the information pioneers
in attendance at the Conference, as well as others who were not. My greatest
regret is that so much of their knowledge, contributions and experience
has been lost and is not being built upon by many of those involved today
in digital libraries, electronic publishing and other forms of scientific
communication. Hopefully, some of the effort to describe pioneering efforts
in information science will bridge this "disconnect".
Last Page | Next
Page | Index
|
Information Science
Research