bodies to share objectives and interests related to the produc¬ 
tion, use, and dissemination of environmental information." 
Anyone interested should contact: Mr. G. M. Gigliotti, Director, 
Public Affairs Office, National Environmental Research Center, 
U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati OH 45268. 
Telephone: (513) 871-1820, ext. 250. 
HIGH SPEED SORTING 
The time required to order data by a computer is dependent 
upon the degree of disorder of the data and the number of records 
being sorted. For randomly ordered data, sorting time is propor¬ 
tional to the square of the number of records to be ordered when 
conventional sorting techniques are used. On IBM 1130 or 1800’s 
or comparable types of computers with slow core cycle times, sort¬ 
ing times can run as long as 30 minutes for 500 records and 2 
hours for 1000 records. Efficient sorting subroutines are often 
supplied by computer firms with software packages, but in many 
cases these subroutines are not supplied. I have developed a 
technique for high speed sorting which can be used on computers 
which do not have such a supplied routine. The technique involves 
initial rough sorting followed by conventional techniques, resul¬ 
ting in a substantial reduction of sorting time. The subroutine 
requires increased core storage and a longer load time, but sort¬ 
ing time can be reduced by a factor of 100 or greater. The sub¬ 
routine has been used to reduce sorting times for 500 records from 
30 minutes to 15 seconds. A Fortran IV listing for floating 
point data will be supplied upon request. This particular sub¬ 
routine is not applicable in BASIC.--Doug Hoese, The Australian 
Museum, 6-8 College St., Sydney, N. S. W. 2000, Australia. 
ON-LINE BIBLIOGRAPHIC SEARCHING 
The National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD, has gone on 
line with a data base of more than 130,000 citations from 239 
medical journals, including all material indexed since January 1, 
1969. The file will be expanded to include over 1000 journals and 
300,000 citations. Currently the system can be accessed through 
a local call in about 35 cities throughout the United States. 
The user must provide his own terminal, and will pay his own tele¬ 
phone costs. Those institutions joining the network must send a 
representative to Bethesda for training in the use of the system 
and agree to provide services to health professionals beyond 
the normal service level. The experimental program leading to 
the expanded service now offered included a data base on toxi¬ 
cology, so that file is already in good shape. Further infor¬ 
mation can be obtained from the National Library of Medicine, 
Bethesda MD 20Q14.--JAP. 
