of chemicals and biological responses to those chemicals, which has been described as an initial 

 inspiration for this collection, might have been a valuable result of the collection, but the Center was 

 by no means committed to limiting its objectives to complex or theoretical correlative studies. 



To a degree, the collection has represented a source of information unavailable anywhere else, 

 partly because some of its sources are not conveniently available to other agencies. This has been a 

 natural result of the CBCC's deliberate efforts to search for more obscure sources of data from chemical- 

 biological tests and the inclusion of test results from the CBCC's own unique and extensive Screening 

 Program. (The Screening Program has been described in the general booklet describing the CBCC, the 

 last edition of which was prepared in 1954. ) For this reason, and because the information has been 

 indexed in ways exceeding any other existing index of the information, the CBCC files are regarded as 

 a valuable reference source of information. As the Center's collection became more widely known, the 

 number of information requests coming to the Center increased; most of these requested that the Center 

 report whatever information its files might have on a subject for which the requester gave specifications. 

 The requests were seldom for the Center's performing actual correlation studies, partly because it has 

 been generally understood that such interpretive projects by the Center were impossible in view of the 

 limitation of the Center's staff size and time and partly because generally the actual correlation can 

 only be accomplished, to the ultimate satisfaction of the requester, by the requester himself. The 

 Center has always had the attitude, however, that the files could be made available, by special 

 request, to any visitor for any broad project of data correlation; none of the information included in 

 the file bears a security classification and no material has been included which is restricted for 

 proprietary reasons. 



Thus, the Center should be regarded as having been in its first years a source of both infor- 

 mation and reference to information, supplementary to all other sources. That this has been appreciated 

 is attested to by the use made of the CBCC files by an impressive number of agencies and individuals. 

 The Center has rightly been regarded, also, as pioneering in the general field of documentation of 

 scientific information, in developing its program for converting chemical and biological data to a form 

 that can be handled practically by mechanical equipment. The CBCC was consulted frequently for 

 advice for establishing other specialized programs of a similar nature and the Chemistry and Biology 

 Codes have been studied and adapted for a number of such programs. Although it has not been possible 

 to conduct broad correlative studies as originally intended (described in the first paragraph as a 

 primary objective), leading to publications and chemical or biological research based on such studies, 

 the Center's files have the important potential of correlative studies. Finally, by a program of col- 

 lecting chemicals to be distributed to selected testing programs screening chemicals for specific effects, 

 the CBCC Screening Program provided a service to this particular field of research that is probably 

 unique and unprecedented. It made possible the testing of chemicals in many ways for which the 

 agencies isolating or synthesizing the chemicals had no equivalent facilities, provided a rich source 

 of chemicals for testing programs whose sources of untested chemicals were limited, and engendered 

 thereby much information on chemicals' capacities for affecting biological systems, which is made 

 available in the CBCC files and by the CBCC bi-monthly publication. Summary Tables of Biological 

 Tests sponsored by the Chemical- Biological Coordination Center. A summation of the Center's aspirations 

 related to coding of chemical-biological information will be found at the close of the final Appendix. 



The announcement of the CBCC's termination was made in December 1956. Therefore, 

 essentially all activities for collection of information and coding into the CBCC files stopped as of 

 that date. Although the files at the date of this publication have not been discarded, they are not 

 generally available in that no staff exists to retrieve information from them. The Screening Program 

 was likewise discontinued. Only one vestige of the CBCC remains active, though it is no longer 

 identified with the Center. This is a specialized project which began as a CBCC responsibility, the 

 Cardiovascular Literature Project of the National Research Council, sponsored by the National Heart 

 Institute, National Institutes of Health. This, however, is not a program for extensive coding and 

 indexing cardiovascular data by CBCC methods nor can it entertain requests for information about 

 references to the literature except through sponsoring agencies. Its objective is to build and publish 

 a comprehensive index to the literature on cardiovascular responses to chemicals, cross-indexed by 

 author, title, and subject, to the extent possible as a publication. The original intent was for the 

 CBCC to incorporate into its coded files all the cardiovascular information, as the project collected it. 



The final gesture in closing the Center is this publication of the Biology Code and Key and a 

 description of the Center's procedures for coding information from tests for biological responses to chem- 

 icals. While it is possible that no center will ever again be established with precisely the objectives 

 of the CBCC nor would the new staff of such a center be inclined to find entirely suitable the present 

 CBCC Biology Code and procedures for coding, the complete record of the CBCC experience in collecting 



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