Neither citation nor loan demand is an adequate measure of literature use by a large community. Each is only an indicator, illuminating some aspects … - Brian Campbell Vickery

I would pinpoint 1958 as a special time in my career. I had for some years been working with the Classification Research Group in London, and in 1957 we had held a small but successful conference to which Jesse Shera, Gene Garfield and others had come from the USA. In 1958 I published my first book, Classification and Indexing in Science, and attended the International Conference on Scientific Information in Washington. This was my first visit to the USA - I flew in a US Army transport plane with . The Conference papers opened up all kinds of new information vistas - in many ways setting the agenda for the ensuing development of the field. I met many interesting people - some who stand out in the memory are Peter Luhn, , John O'Connor and Desmond Bernal. The experience of attending the conference, and of other visits I paid at that time, led to the writing of my second book, On Retrieval System Theory...

# The general structural features of the system considered as a network of units of information linked to each other and to documentary items. This may be called structural analysis.

We communicate with each other to inform, to instruct, to persuade, to amuse, to annoy. Informing and instructing aim to alter the receiver's concepts, whereas persuading, amusing or annoying aim to change his preferences or feelings. In a work situation people do make jokes and enemies, and use the arts of persuasion, but much of their communication has an informal or instructional aspect.