systems, COSI is chaired by Lt. General William J. Ely, USA, of the Department of Defense.

In recent months COSI has sponsored a number of actions of general interest to the scientific information handling community:

It underwrote the assignment to the National Bureau of Standards of the task of establishing a National Standard Reference Data System. The system will coordinate the collection and evaluation of numerical data in the physical and engineering sciences and ensure that they are readily available to all. In endorsing this activity, the members of COSI assured the NBS of the cooperation of the data collection and evaluation organizations that COSI member agencies are already supporting.

It adopted a uniform policy, subsequently endorsed by the Federal Council, to guide Federal agencies handling requests for financial assistance to nonprofit, extra-government publication activities. The intent of the policy is to permit individual agencies to aid nongovernmental publications in subject areas of the agencies' concern without, in the process of aiding them, running the risk of excessive Federal control or of disrupting competitive equilibria.

It adopted a standard, also endorsed by the Federal Council, for the storage in reproducible form of technical reports. It will be some time before all agencies can adopt the standard; ultimately, however, as a result of using a uniform reduction ratio (18:1) and image placement, it will be possible to use the same reading and printing equipment on all microfiche versions of technical reports regardless of the agency origin of the reports.

At the request of COSI and with the favorable endorsement of the Federal Council, fiscal and managerial responsibility for the Science Information Exchange has been transferred to the National Science Foundation. This change was made in recognition of the increasingly difficult problems that face the Smithsonian Institution in its stewardship of the SIE as SIE's subject coverage and level of activity increase.

A Status Report on Scientific and Technical Information in the Federal Government was prepared with the aid of the Office of Science Information Service. It provides a comprehen

sive picture of the actions that have been and are being taken by the various Federal agencies to improve the handling and dissemination of scientific and technical information. The report may be purchased from the Office of Technical Services, Department of Commerce; price 50 cents.

In addition to these activities, COSI has encouraged and participated in efforts toward clarification of such issues as the implications for the Federal establishment of the recommendations of the PSAC report Science, Government, and Information; the identification and definition of the myriad kinds of information activity that people now loosely refer to as "specialized information services"; and the problem of selecting optimal chemical structure coding methods.

In the near future, COSI intends to scrutinize, with the aid of the Office of Science Information Service, such additional subjects as U.S. translation activities, convertibility among the major indexing systems used by various agencies, extension of Federal policy with respect to subsidy of non-Federal publications activities, and the role of depositories in the dissemination of technical reports both in the U. S. and abroad. Reports of progress in these areas will be appearing in future issues of Scientific Information Notes.

NATIONAL CLEARINGHOUSE FOR MENTAL HEALTH INFORMATION

The National Clearinghouse for Mental Health Information has been established at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Joseph H. Douglass has been named chief of the clearinghouse and Lorraine Bouthilet is program director.

Purpose of the clearinghouse is to provide a central, coordinated source of information on all aspects of mental health and illness. When fully operational, it will collect, store, and retrieve information derived from the scientific and professional literature, manpower studies, mental health programs, and other sources. Clearinghouse staff will analyze, interpret, and evaluate trends in the mental health field and disseminate scientific and programmatic infor

mation to scientists, practitioners, and administrators. Requests for information from professional and lay individuals and groups will also be answered.

Clearinghouse policy will be to avoid duplication of effort and to foster cooperation among the many organizations now collecting and disseminating mental health information. Informational activities within the Institute will continue, the clearinghouse serving to supplement and coordinate them.

The clearinghouse is now in the planning stage, and several pilot activities have begun. Simultaneously, the design for a comprehensive information system is being developed. The pilot activities as well as the systems design and implementation will be expanded gradually in a series of stages during the next few years, with the expectation that the clearinghouse will be functioning on a full-scale basis within three or four years.

Announcements will be issued regularly to organizations and groups to keep them informed of the status and available services of the new information center.

SLA AND ADI JOINT PROGRAM
TO IMPROVE

HANDLING OF The presidents of the
TECHNICAL
INFORMATION

Special Libraries Association, Mildred M. Brode, and the American Documentation Institute, Robert M. Hays, have sent a jointly signed letter to the Special Assistant to President Kennedy for Science and Technology, Jerome B. Wiesner, informing him that the two professional societies have taken steps to establish a Joint Operating Group to strengthen their programs relating to the problems of improving the handling of technical information. This joint cooperative endeavor has been prompted by the recommendations made by the President's Science Advisory Committee in the report entitled Science, Government, and Information: The Responsibilities of the Technical Community and the Government in the

Transfer of Information (also referred to as the Weinberg Report). SLA and ADI hope other professional organizations will join them in this concerted effort to make available to the technical community the talents and competance of all concerned with information handling.

NEWS BRIEFS

.. The Small Business Administration has awarded a study contract to Bjorksten Research Laboratories, Madison, Wisconsin, to conduct an evaluation study of the technical material published as a result of Government sponsored research and development in the field of plastics. Emphasis will be placed on producing descriptions of industrial implications of the reports which will be meaningful and understandable to both the technical and executive personnel of small business concerns.

The Office of Technical Services, Department of Commerce, has issued an April 1963 selective bibliography on Machine Translations based on reports listed in the two OTS semi-monthly abstract journals, U. S. Government Research Reports and Technical Translations. Copies of the 20page publication, SB-470, Revised, may be purchased for 10 cents from OTS, Department of Commerce, Washington, D. C. 20230.

The International Computation Center in Rome has begun publication of a monthly called ICC Newsletter, which will be sent free of charge to all persons interested in the activities of the center. Direct inquiries to the center at Palazzo degli Ufficio, Viale della Civilta del Lavoro, 23, Rome, Italy.

Av

Volume 1, No. 1 of the Chinese Journal of Physics appeared in April of this year. It is published by The Physical Society of the Republic of China, Taiwan, China. Editorial offices are located in the Physics Department, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, China.

CHICAGO ADI MEETING
CONCENTRATES
ON SCIENTIFIC
COMMUNICATION

"Automation and Scientific Communication" is the theme of the 26th annual meeting of the American Documentation Institute at the Pick-Congress Hotel in Chicago, October 6-11, 1963. Hans Peter Luhn, program chairman and president-elect of ADI, said, "This meeting will deal with the problems of the complete cycle of communication in science, law, and management. We shall try to answer the question of whether automation is the way to go in handling of information. If so, what are the chances it will work?"

The problem of adequacy of information has been highlighted in recent discussion in several of the scientific societies. One aspect of this problem which the ADI sessions will emphasize will be communication at scientific meetings. Has the volume of scientific communication become so large that the traditional conventiontype meeting cannot cope with it? Are there other formats which would be more effective?

The themes of similar conferences have almost always been concerned with information storage and retrieval. The 1963 ADI meeting considers this subject as only one of twelve topics. Of these, the one with universal interest to both generators and users of information is how the author must adjust to the requirements of automation so that his message will get through to his public.

"For the first time, the ADI will encourage exhibitors to give formal presentations about their products," Mr. Luhn said. These scheduled sessions will be instructive from two points of view-the manufacturers will learn about real requirements, and the users will be able to study the capabilities and limitations of the products described. "I can think of no healthier exchange of information," he concluded.

Another first will be the "Author Forums” where, in small groups, maximum communication between those who wish to inform and those who wish to be informed can be achieved. Interest in meeting with a particular author may be expressed at the time of the distribution of the pre-printed papers. Optimum sched

uling of the author forums will be made by computer processing of the expressions of interest.

The advance program and registration information may be obtained from the Executive Secretariat, American Documentation Institute, 1728 N Street, N. W., Washington 6, D. C.

PLANS DEVELOPING FOR IFIP CONGRESS 65

Initial plans have been announced for the May 1965 IFIP Congress 65, to be held in New York City. Sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing, the congress, first to be held in the U. S., will bring together information scientists and engineers from approximately 50 countries. Sessions will be simultaneously translated into English and French.

Detailed plans have been developed by all committees under the direction of the conference chairman, Werner Buchholz of IBM Development Laboratories, Poughkeepsie, N. Y., assisted by vice chairman, William R. Longergan of the Univac Division of Sperry Rand Corporation, New York City. Because of the global nature of the conference, these plans will be reviewed for final policy decision at the IFIP Council Meeting in Gola, Norway, this September.

IFIP Congress 65 will present a technical program designed as a comprehensive survey of the latest achievements in the information processing sciences. The program committee is headed by Borje Langefors of the Swedish Society for Information Processing. Vice chairman is Alston S. Householder of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

While the technical program will present results of research and development of new techniques in the handling of information by computers, the actual equipment, including digital and analog computers, information storage systems, input-output systems, data communications equipment, and advanced components, will be on operational display in Interdata 65, the

IFIP congress exhibition. Exhibits chairman is Don Thomsen of IBM Corporation, White Plains, New York.

A special feature of IFIP Congress 65 will be an Information Sciences Cinema, showing an international selection of the best motion pictures about this field.

MILITARY The Seventh Military LiLIBRARIANS brarians Workshop will be WORKSHOP held this year at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, White

Oak, Silver Spring, Maryland, beginning Oc

tober 2. Theme of the 3-day workshop is "Procurement and Retrieval-Meeting the Challenge."

Dwight Lyman of the Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory, New London, Connecticut, is program committee chairman. Latest developments in computer-oriented and manual library systems will be discussed together with problems in publication acquisition.

About 125 librarians from military establishments in the U. S. and Canada are expected to attend the workshop, which is by invitation only. Headquarters for the attendees is the Georgian Motel in Silver Spring, Maryland.