COMMISSION VI 
PAGE: 3 
  
Session on 
To: Audience of Symposium SUBJECT: ISP-IRS DATE: 06.09.82 
  
3.4 
3.5 
3.6 
3, 
7 
10. assignments of individuals to key positions on national and inter- 
national levels; 
11. patent documents; 
12. others. 
Philosophy for input selection for ISP-IRS. This topic is both, delicate 
and urgent. Anticipating we should prevent to overlaod ISP-IRS, then some 
guidelines are required for input selection. Three outstanding and dis- 
tinguished scholars (one each from IAC, IAG and ISP) have been in- 
vited to deliver a paper on this topic. They agreed on the great im- 
portance of this subject. The main reason for not disposing on their 
paper for the Symposium is lack of time to prepare that outline. 
An example for the necessity of that type of guidelines for input selection 
is that the President Commission IV received from his predecessor a list of 
several hundreds of literature references covering one country as from 
1870 on articles being written to some extent in a language known to 
just some five million people. 
The Symposium is requested to consider whether a computerized information 
retrieval is wanted and, in the affirmative, whether ISP-IRS should be 
1. accessible for anybody in any country; 
2. accessible in both modes, online and via the "Post Card Approach 
(PCA)" (you just send a post card with your key words and you will 
get a computer outprint on literature existing anywhere) ; 
3. capable to deliver COM (Computer Output on Microfiches) ; 
4. usable free of charge, thus being available also for professionals from 
countries not disposing on foreign currency (hence, inter alia, de- 
veloping countries), and for young scientists who normally do not 
dispose on much money (being aware that 80% of all findings having been 
awarded with a Nobel Prize were accomplished before the researcher had 
reached the age of 35); 
5. run in cooperation with the Sister Societies FIG, IAC and IAG. 
6. Other demands? 
Establishing and maintaining the data base for ISP-IRS may require four 
full time Master graduates. This work must be accomplished by pro- 
fessionals, whereas the host data processor can be at any institution 
disposing on adequate facilities to operate an information retrieval 
system. 
Being an international society, we should adopt, or at least consider, 
rules and ideas as set by that international organization being re- 
sponsible for the subject. Therefore, two literature references are 
added: 
Griffiths, José-Marie; Application of Minicomputers and Microcomputers 
/ to Information Handling; Paris, UNESCO (PGI-8/WS/28), 1981; 
Dierickx, Harold; Reference Manual for machine readable bibliographic 
descriptions; Paris, UNESCO (PGI-8,/WS/22), 1981.