Reconversion 



At the close of the war Dr. Bush and the scientific community generally 

 were keenly aware of the volume and importance of the scientific information 

 generated during the War and which had necessarily been subject to severe 

 security restrictions. Of the medical information developed during the 

 War, however, the greater part had remained unclassified and had been 

 published. Dr. Bush expressed the view ". . . that most of the remainder of 

 the classified scientific material should be released as soon as there is ground 

 for belief that an enemv will not be able to turn it against us in this war." 



On the whole, this problem seems to have been successfully met. Despite the 

 enormous volume of material involved and the shortages of military and tech- 

 nical personnel qualified to rule on the security status of technical data, de- 

 classification has been steadilv going on since the War. The Department of 

 Defense through its Office of Declassification Policy and the Atomic Energy 

 Commission through its Division of Classification are actively attacking this 

 problem on a continuing basis. In the opinion of some who are dealing with 

 this problem, more reports are being declassified than consumers can find 

 time to read. 



The latter point, of course, is related to the whole broad problem of the 

 dissemination, storage, and retrieval of scientific information. This problem 

 has received attention from the National Science Foundation since its in- 

 ception, but because of limitation of funds, activities in this area were nec- 

 essarily supported at a fairly low level until recently. Early in 1958 the 

 President's Science Advisory Committee made a detailed study of what the 

 Government should do to improve the flow of scientific information and 

 thereby increase its utilization. As a result of the Committee's recommenda- 

 tions, the President directed that the scientific information activity of the 

 National Science Foundation should be strengthened and expanded. At 

 about the same time, under Title IX of Public Law 85-864 (the National 

 Defense Education Act of 1958), the Foundation was authorized to establish a 

 Science Information Service and also a Science Information Council, which 

 would include in its membership outstanding scientists, information experts, 

 and heads of Federal Bureaus and agencies that are directly concerned with 

 the dissemination of information. 



In a number of programs the Office of Science Information Service of 

 the Foundation has sought to improve the dissemination of existing materials 

 by helping to provide for prompt publication of research results, reference aids 

 and information centers of various kinds, and translations of significant scien- 

 tific papers in languages not widely understood by American scientists. In 

 addition, the Foundation is supporting a slowly growing body of research 

 directed to whole new approaches in various aspects of the information prob- 

 lem. Most of the research is concerned with exploration of ways of using 

 machines to help with information processing tasks, such as the organization, 

 storage and searching of scientific information and the- translation of scientific 

 publications from foreign languages into English. Before machines can 

 process the texts of documents, however, for either mechanized information 

 searching systems or mechanical translation systems, more precise knowledge 

 of syntax and semantics is needed. Therefore, current research acti\nties in 



xviii 



