SESSION 4B PAPER 2 THE MECHANIZATION OF LITERATURE SEARCHING

I am quite ready to subscribe to the already mentioned slogan that "whatever a human being can do,an appropriate machine can do, too"; but I do this only because.I regard the slogan as utterly trivial. At the moment, I am not talking about what maohines could do in principle but only about what actually existing or blueprinted machines could do, and it Is with regard to these that I utter my definite opinions. If someone wishes to write sciencefiction about information-processing centres of the (undetermined) future, let him do so and I shall discuss it with him over a glass of beer and even offer some startling suggestions of my own. If he is interested in improving the literature search process today, I would strongly advise him to forget about mechanizing abstracting or indexing. May I add that it is with a good amount of sorrow that I have come to this conclusion which is quite counter, to my temperament and my convictions (never published) of a few years ago.