5^0 HISTORY OF Till COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



own making." This recommendation helped strengthen the hand of 

 the committee in its sustained efforts to preserve the continuity of 

 support for hasic research. 



As an offshoot of its study on centralizing Federal science responsi- 

 bilities, the committee also came up with a unique recommendation 

 in a 1970 report on "The National Institutes of Research and Advanced 

 Studies." The report recommended establishment of a NIRAS to 

 consolidate Federal responsibilities for basic research and graduate 

 education. Daddario labeled NIRAS as "a fresh approach" which 

 "employs commonsense." He also stated: 



The fundamental concept of the NIRAS is valuable for an additional reason. 

 It would, in our judgment, do much to refresh the spirit and morale of one of our 

 great national treasures the colleges and universities of the country. I do not speak 

 here of the difficulties which have arisen due to social unrest and other student 

 disorders. But rather, I refer to the somewhat jaundiced eye which higher education 

 as a whole is beginning to cast on our Federal Government because of its unpredict- 

 able, hot-and-cold attitude toward the support of fundamental scientific study and 

 research. 



Even though the farsighted concept of NIRAS was never formally 

 placed into effect, and even though the subcommittee was not successful 

 in getting this recommendation fully adopted, the National Science 

 Foundation to an extent adopted some of the concepts involved. And 

 the subcommittee once again was armed with strong weapons in 

 arguing its points in future negotiations with the executive branch. 



DISSEMINATION OF SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION 



Early in 1970, the subcommittee stepped up its work on studying 

 the storage, retrieval, and dissemination of science information. 

 "The Management of Information and Knowledge" was selected as 

 the central theme of the Panel on Science and Technology which met 

 January 27-29, with McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Founda- 

 tion, and Hon. Earl Warren, former Chief Justice of the United States, 

 as special keynoters. The Panel discussed the impact of the computer 

 and cybernetics communications on society. In the spring of 1970, 

 the subcommittee continued discussions which had been progressing 

 for several years with a special steering group at the Smithsonian 

 Institution, on the subject of how to keep abreast with the rapid 

 developments in the science communications field. In May 1970, an 

 agreement was worked out with Smithsonian and the full committee 

 to cosponsor a study of the application of new methods of science 

 information management to modern urban problems. The actual work 

 on the study was completed in April 1971 by an organization known 

 as the Science Communications Council, headed by William Knox, 



