Distill or drown: The need for reviews

SEP 01, 1968

The information explosion sparks a need for creative synthesis of facts and ideas. For efficient access to good science literature we must devise new schemes for compression.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3035150

Conyers Herring

BY NOW THERE can hardly be a physicist who has not been jolted by the challenge of the information explosion. Some men have been so overcome that they have given up subscribing to The Physical Review for lack of shelf space. The widespread concern about this challenge has been reflected in a number of recent articles in PHYSICS TODAY and in similar discussions in magazines of other fields and other countries. Among the great bulk of physicists diverse attitudes prevail: Some remain happy in a speciality narrow enough so that they can feel “in the swim” if they keep in touch with a few colleagues and read a highly specialized journal; others rationalize with the comment that most of the literature is garbage anyway; a few pin their hopes on the vast improvements being made by their documentalist colleagues in the science of indexing and retrieval.

References

1. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information, National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council, Washington (1959), see especially pp. 649–59.
2. S. A. Goudsmit, PHYSICS TODAY 19, no. 9, 52 (1966).https://doi.org/PHTOAD
3. D. J. de Solla Price, in Communication in Science: Documentation and Automation, A. de Reuck, J. Knight, eds., J. and A. Churchill Ltd., London (1967), p. 199.
4. H. W. Koch, PHYSICS TODAY 21, no. 4, 41 (1968).https://doi.org/PHTOAD
5. M. Kessler, PHYSICS TODAY 18, no. 3, 28 (1965); https://doi.org/PHTOAD
S. C. Brown, PHYSICS TODAY 19, no. 5, 59 (1966).https://doi.org/PHTOAD , Phys. Today
6. Directory of Federally Supported Information Analysis Centers, prepared by the Committee on Scientific and Technical Information of the Federal Council for Science and Technology. Available from the Federal Clearinghouse for Science and Technology, National Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C.
7. Science, Government and Information, Report of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (January 1963), p. 3. Available from the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
8. Physics: Survey and Outlook, Reports of the Physics Survey Committee, National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council (1966), p. 146.

More about the Authors

Conyers Herring. Bell Telephone Labs.