AN EXPERIMENTAL CURRENT AWARENESS SERVICE IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Abstract

Details are given of an experimental information service sponsored by the Office for Scientific and Technical Information through its Documentation Processing Centre as part of a programme to test the suitability of established computer techniques in the field of the social sciences. In the period 30 October to 20 December 1968, 4,500 index entries for material in the public policy area of British domestic affairs were prepared in the House of Commons Library and computer‐processed and printed by the Culham Laboratory of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. Weekly Current Literature Bulletins were produced in thirty‐six subject fields and distributed to participants (over four hundred Members of Parliament and about one hundred others) according to their expressed interests. A large majority of the MPs who answered a questionnaire said that they would like to see a permanent service on similar lines. Regular machine‐produced cumulations of all or part of the input over a period could be a feature of such a service.