specific chemicals, organisms, and responses, a search in the CBCC punched card files (where 

 chemicals, organisms, and responses, as well as other Index subjects, are all cross-indexed) is far 

 more rapid and, with regard to that chemical-biological literature covered by the CBCC, more thorough. 

 That it may not be as thorough as certain published indexes, with respect to the total number of journals 

 covered, must be regarded as reflecting only the limitations of the Center during its developing years 

 for covering that quantity of published information. 



The preceding observations have been concerned in general with abstracting published infor- 

 mation and indexing it according to chemical, organism, and response, for sake of comparison with 

 published abstracts and indexes. It should be recalled, however, that the CBCC made efforts to collect 

 information that had not been published or that was in more obscure or irregular publications and reports 

 given limited distribution. Many tests of a screening nature remain unpublished because of the low 

 priority ordinarily given to such masses of data under circumstances of high costs of publication and 

 the large volume of technical information competing for publication. One reason for the reluctance to 

 publish data of this type is the general disregard for "negative" data which characterizes much of the 

 information from routine screening tests. 



In summary, the multiple- indexing , coupled with the speed afforded by machines for selection 

 of desired index combinations, represents the basic advantage offered by the CBCC system. Added to 

 this are the two further advantages, (1) the fact that the CBCC attempted to collect unpublished or 

 obscurely published information not apt to be covered by publi^ed indexes and (2) thoroughness in 

 abstracting and indexing original chemical-biological data, whether published or unpublished, resulting 

 from the Center's concentration on that specific area of information. ^ 



By these means and policies, the Center attempted to develop a system of handling chemical- 

 biological information whereby, having collected the data as thoroughly and carefully as possible, it 

 could be retrieved and correlated as efficiently as possible, by as many subject indexes as that 

 particular information is apt ever to be approached. 



A particularly fine description of the CBCC, presented against the background of a dissertation on 

 discoveries of therapeutic properties of chemicals, will be found in an article by J. R. M. Innes, 

 The Work of the Chemical- Biological Coordination Center in Relation to Chemotherapy in Veterinary 

 Medicine, J. Am. Vet. Assoc, 116(874) 1950. 



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