My "biggest moment" in the field of information science occurred in 1968 when I discovered that my first book had been accepted for publication by John Wiley. Following work on the Aslib Cranfield Project, and various evaluation studies for Herner & Co., I had recently completed a large-scale evaluation of MEDLARS (published in 1968). The book was based primarily on my experience in these various evaluation studies.
    It is never easy for a relatively unknown author to find a publisher, and my experience was no exception. I first submitted the manuscript to Columbia University Press and later to McGraw-Hill, Both sat on the submission for several months before they eventually declined.
    At that point I was ready to give up on the whole thing and was beginning to feel that the book was perhaps not worth publishing after all. Quite by chance, I mentioned the situation to a professional colleague, Jesse Ostroff. He said that he was quite friendly with Joe Becker who, at that time, was very influential in Wiley's publishing in information science. Jesse gave a copy of my text to Joe, who liked it. John Wiley made a rapid decision to publish.