and letters with respect to this legislation and without objection they will be made a part of the printed hearings record as will appropriate statements that are received during the next 10 days. I shall be advising the members of the subcommittee of the time and place for markup sessions. The subcommittee now stands in adjournment, subject to the call of the Chair. (Whereupon, at 12 noon, the subcommittee adjourned. ) APPENDIX (Following are letters and other documents ordered to be made a part of the hearing record.) NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, Hon. JOHN BRADEMAS, U.S. House of Representatives, DEAR MR. BRADEMAS: Enclosed are excerpts from the final report of the Committee on Scientific and Technical Communication (SATCOM) of the National Academy of Sciences-National Academy of Engineers. These enclosures include portions of the SATCOM final report that are relevant to the Bill to Establish a National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. SATCOM sees no conflict in the basic import of the recommendations of the National Advisory Commission on Libraries and its own philosophy and recommendations. Further, we believe that the coordinating commission that we propose within the structure of the Academies and the one proposed by the National Advisory Commission on Libraries could complement and supplement one another's efforts, and that there is ample need and scope for the activities of both proposed bodies. We also believe that those aspects of the information problem that transcend the library problem can be most effectively handled by the type of coordinating mechanism we recommend. Chapter 2 of our report (see Enclosure A) presents our basic thinking and a summary of the topics treated in our recommendations. Two sections of Chapter 3 (see Enclosure B) present our recommendations on libraries and our comments on the report of the National Advisory Commission on Libraries. Chapter 10 (see Enclosure C) describes in detail the Joint Commission on Scientific and Technical Communication, responsible to the Councils of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. If further information on our report and recommendations is needed or appropriate, I will be glad to provide it. Sincerely, ROBERT W. CAIRNS, Chairman, Committee on Scientific and Technical Communication. ENCLOSURE A Chapter 2 A SUMMARY OF SATCOM'S THINKING AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION A. BASIO PRINCIPLES A primary concern throughout our survey was to relate the complex network of scientific and technical communication activities to the environment that has shaped it, supports its current operation, and will influence the course of its future development. A variety of factors affect and, in turn, are affected by patterns of scientific and technical communication. These include: 1. The education, objectives, and work habits of those who guide or participate in the conduct of science and technology 2. The missions, resources, and intellectual authority of the organizations and institutions that establish policies, set standards of performance, and determine the allocation of resources (165) 3. The emergence of new technological and procedural tools The philosophy that we have developed during our three years of existence accords with and builds upon that expressed in the earlier reports of the Baker and Weinberg Panels (Refs. 14 and 170, respectively). Our philosophy also has been strongly influenced by the extraordinary diversity of the things we have learned about information services and systems and about the needs and aspirations of those whom they serve. This diversity, of which we hope the reader will get at least a taste in Chapters 4 through 9, can be bewildering, yet at the same time filled with opportunities, and it is the latter aspect that has impressed us most. Our recommendations reflect our effort to stimulate recognition of some of the major opportunities and acceptance of responsibility for action. For example, we have tried to challenge the scientific and technical societies to appreciate the crucial role they must play and have pointed to some specific areas in which they can take steps to fulfill this role. We have emphasized to sponsors of research and development that such work is of value only when the results are accessible and capable of being adapted to the contexts in which they can be applied. In other words, the sponsors' responsibility for such work includes whatever steps are appropriate (patent, publication, announcement, etc.) and necessary to assure its availability. We have pointed to the feasibility and necessity of serving special user groups (each numbering a thousand or so) who have common information needs that often cut across several disciplines or encompass only one particular subdivision of a broad discipline. Effective service to such groups is a first approach to the future goal of individual service geared to each user's specific requirements. We have called particular attention, as have several committees and panels before us (for example, the Weinberg Panel, Ref. 170), to the ever-growing need to sift, evaluate, compile, and consolidate the rapidly expanding store of scientific and technical information. And possibly most crucial, we have suggested mechanisms and policies that we believe will be the most effective means of coordinating and focusing scientific and technical communication efforts during this transitional period of burgeoning activity and rapid change. Fundamental to the SATCOM philosophy is our recognition that a basic element of strength in our country's overall scientific and technical communication effort is the participation of the members of the scientific and technical community in its development and administration. As a result of their broad participation, our extraordinarily diverse communication programs and services have maintained a flexible responsiveness to changing and newly emerging needs as well as fulfilling a variety of other functions not entirely relevant to communication but reflecting firmly established traditions and work habits of scientists, engineers, and practitioners or of the organizations with which they are associated. Because so many kinds of information must be communicated, and because there are increasingly wide variations among groups of users in regard to the types of information that they need and the forms and language in which they need it (see Chapter 4, Sections A and B), this flexibility and responsiveness must remain intrinsic to our scientific and technical communication network. In our concern for maximizing the strengths implicit in our diversity (diverse components, fulfilling an ever-expanding range of functions, and associated with various managing, producing, using, and marketing groups) and for providing continuing responsiveness and progress in meeting new and increasing demands, we have developed a few broad guiding principles that have colored nearly all our recommendations and supplied criteria for our decisions on difficult and controversial issues. The first of these guiding principles is: The management of all scientific and technical communication activities must be as responsive as possible to the needs, desires, and innovative ideas of the scientific and technical groups that they serve. These activities must be sufficiently flexible to adapt rapidly to changes in user needs and communication techniques. In this context, we especially emphasize the need for an equitable balance of influence among the managers of information programs, the generators and users of information, and those who market information products. Therefore, there should be ample opportunities for interaction among these groups, both within particular programs and between different programs. Though we have emphasized diversity in speaking of today's scientific and technical information needs and concerns, the most obvious problem is that of sheer size. The great bulk of material to be handled poses administrative, economic, and intellectual problems, which have been further aggravated by the rapid expansion of our country's research and development effort, the accelerated pace of science and technology, and the ever-growing diversity of needs. While there are obvious advantages to centralizing authority over large areas of införmation and communication activities, overcentralization can negate the responsiveness that we regard as so vital to the continued effectiveness of scientific and technical communication. Consequently, as a second guiding principle, we believe that: The administrative entities responsible for scientific and technical information programs must be so organized and coordinated that they represent a logical and efficient division of functions, but authority over them must be sufficiently widely distributed to achieve the responsiveness we deem essential. Third, we feel that it would be fatal to ignore the purely intellectual problems posed by the mass of knowledge that is inexorably accumulating; therefore: The planning of our information activities must involve constant attention to the simplification and consolidation of existing knowledge and its frequent reprocessing to adapt it to the needs of diverse users, especially those primarily engaged in the practical application of scientific and technical information. A brief discussion of three vitally important problem areas will further illustrate the SATCOM philosophy. The first such problem area is that of defining the relative roles of the federal government and private organizations—both not for profit and for profit-in the communication of scientific and technical information. Private and government organizations have, or should have, the common objective of providing information services that are increasingly responsive to the needs of users of scientific and technical information. However, there are basic differences in the motivation and capabilities inherently identified with not-for-profit, for-profit, and government organizations, and each of these types of organizations has characteristics or attributes that are uniquely its own. The roles of these various kinds of organizations should be mutually reinforcing, with each being assisted in or given the opportunity to fulfill those communication functions to which it is best suited. The not-for-profit private organizations have a vital part to play in the communication of scientific and technical information. Such organizations include the vast array of scientific and technical societies that came into existence principally to serve the information needs of the disciplines that they represent. Because their members typically are among the principal generators and users of scientific and technical information, the societies are uniquely able to collect, assemble, and assure the quality of the information that they distribute through their basic primary and secondary publications programs. And they have a widely recognized and generally accepted responsibility for assuring the continuity and progress of their particular domains of science or technology. The unique attribute of the private for-profit organizations in the fulfillment of their equally vital role in the communication of scientific and technical information is that their survival and growth depend directly upon their ability to recognize, understand, and adequately serve users' needs. This ability has important applications in the service of both scientific and technical societies and the federal government and should be fully utilized. Such organizations traditionally have been particularly effective in providing information for the practioner and in developing specialized, highly user-oriented services, some of which are designed especially to serve the research community. Every government agency must support the scientific and technical information activities that are required in the accomplishment of its mission. In addition, the federal government inevitably must provide substantial support, through certain of its agencies, to scientific and technical information efforts in the public interest. Clearly such support cannot be extended without the exercise of responsible management and control. Minimizing the danger of conflict between such control and a ready response to the needs and views of the scientific and technical communities is a difficult task. We believe that such difficulties can be minimized if the support of a discipline's scientific and technical information services does not become more narrowly concentrated than its support of that discipline's overall research and development effort. The economics of information services constitutes a second major and pervasive problem area. At the present time, different mechanism provide for the revenues and determine the market prices of primary publications and secondary awareness and access services, though both types of services are directly related |