The field of information retrieval, the methods of indexing and storing the vast number of scientific documents which have been produced in recent years is surveyed. Information retrieval utilizes coordinate indexing - that is, listing documents under all the topics they contain and searching for them by two or more terms. There are two principal types of indexing: one using a predetermined list of terms into which all documents must be fitted and the other allowing free choice of the terms found in the documents themselves. Elaboration of these methods and the difficulty of developing a list of indexing terms are also discussed. An information retrieval system may consist of an index only, an index with an abstract, or an entire document with an index. The mechanical equipment used may range from punched cards through IBM cards to complex computers and micro photographic systems. The experiences of various organizations with different combinations of equipment and methods are discussed.

Guidelines for text reduction were developed and evaluated to advance the art of manually preparing informative abstracts. The study was intended to: (1) develop guidelines that result in abstracts which provide maximal support to abstract-users, and (2) develop these guidelines so that they result in reliable, i.e., consistent, abstracts of scientific/technical material. The abstracting procedure, and Abstracting Form and associated instructions, produces reasonably consistent abstracts. An expert judge rated 13 subsections of six technical papers prepared by three different abstracters as 88% consistent, i.e., contained identical information. The abstracts prepared were a substantial reduction of the original text. Considering the six abstracts used in a performance test (judged as containing the most information, but not necessarily the longest) mean percentage reductions obtained were: 47% reduction of words, 28% reduction of figures, and 27% reduction of equations. Level of performance, as measured by accuracy on use-tests, supported by abstracts was equivalent to that supported by original text, regardless of test time restriction. However, total test time required was less using abstracts than with full text. (Author).

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