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3. Outlook into the Future
Facing the future necessitates endeavouring to reduce reinventions by promoting
scientific communication, more specific by intensifying the use of literature
of other countries. This task has three aspects, namely bibliography, public-
ations, and the language barrier.
For the past decade or so, quite a few other professional fields have abandoned
conventional bibliographies. Instead, they have stored all required information in
a data base. That provides the unsurpassable advantage to retrieve within seconds
what otherwise will take hours or even days. As an example, the Chemical Abstract
Service of the American Chemical Society in Columbus, Ohio, updates a chemical
data base by preparing daily about 2,000 abstracts employing a staff of 1,000
professionals whilst reviewing 14,000 periodicals from 125 countries (ARNTZ 1977).
This data base with 4,5 million literature references is used in many countries.
Within ISPRS, Commission VI has the responsibility for bibliography. Therefore,
the subject "ISP Information Retrieval System /ISP - IRS)" is a focal point
of the Symposium of Commission VI in September 1982 in Mainz, FR Germany. Some
10 papers cover the various subitems involved. The scope is to finalize the de-
finition phase and to establish specifications for starting the ISP Information
Retrieval System. Hopefully, this will pave the road leading to the year 2000.
It is my firm belief that we should implement a modern retrieval system not only
for photogrammetry and remote sensing, but for the broad field of surveying and
mapping. I therefore invite the Sister Societies sincerely and cordially to
make it a joint venture.
The costs for an online search for literature retrieval is in the order of
$ 100. This in itself is certainly cheap considering the gain in working time.
However, envisaging that 80 percent of all findings having been awarded with a
Nobel Prize were accomplished before the researcher had reached the age of 35, and
being aware that young researchers do not dispose on much money, and facing
that professionals from a growing number of nations, particularly developing
countries, do not have access to foreign currency, any retrieval within the ISP
Information Retrieval System should be free of charge.
The ISP Information Retrieval System must be available for colleagues in all
countries earthwide. But at this point we have to worry again with the language
barrier. When applying modern facilities for jumping over this barrier we should
distinguish between operational software for automatic translation of texts, and
proper translation of technical terms. The latter one can be done by nobody but
ourselves. So far, we dispose for the broad field of surveying and mapping on
nothing but the ICA Multilingual Dictionary (1973) and on a preliminary edition
of 17 volumes of the FIG Multilingual Dictionary of terms and definitions pu-
blished 1971. It is an urgent demand for all Sister Societies to engage heavily
in compiling a final edition.
A multilingual dictionary, or glossary, should contain at least.definitions for
all keywords being eventually used within a literature retrieval. These key-
words in various languages can be a part of the software. That guarantees suc-
cessful search also for abstracts in languages being not known to the request-
ing researcher. An information retrieval system on surveying and mapping will
be exploitable just to a fraction of its capabilities without a multilingual
dictionary. :
Hothmer 7
