The 1950s to early 1960s saw the publication of three major works on indexing, which between them span the retrieval problems of the whole spectrum o… - Douglas John Foskett

Since books are not their primary source materials, as they are for research in the humanities, most scientists prefer to spend their time on experiments and not on reading.

Classification is thought of by many librarians as either a fearful complication of a very simply act, or an outmoded, almost prehistoric, method of doing a very complex mathematical task.

After six years of war service, I rejoined Ilford Public Library service in 1946, and set about completing my F.L.A., begun in 1940. This service had a good tradition of assistance to readers, and when I joined the Metal Box C. in 1948, I soon realised how the skills required for a scientific and industrial research “information officer” depended on the basic techniques of librarianship, notably classification and cataloguing. The enhancement of these led to the development of higher levels, in literature searching, and, more particularly, in current awareness service and selective dissemination of information.... Meeting with S. R. Ranganathan in 1948 gave me a new view of classification as facet analysis plus traditional generic analysis and I applied this in schemes for Packaging, Occupational Safety and Health, and Education. This experience has suggested to me that facet analysis applied to any subject can reveal hitherto uncoordinated concepts - materials, processes, etc – and thus offer an indication of possible areas of future research. This could be a unique Information Science to the World Wide Web.