TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION IN A LARGE GOVERNMENT R&D ORGANIZATION.

In a government organization like the Energy Research and Development Administration, the ways of distributing technical information tend to be more complex than in an industrial organization. The centralized scheme for communications described in this article combines the virtues of open- and closed-cycle systems and uses a computerized data base, not only for ERDA's R and D programs, but also for the extensive worldwide energy literature. The author also describes a unique system of subject headings developed for the International Nuclear Information System. The uniqueness of this subject indexing system is that it is based on descriptors chosen for Boolean search by computer; however, the descriptors and the title (which is already in the data base as a result of previous descriptive cataloging input) are arranged by the computer to prepare a meaningful printed subject index.