Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University, was a center of information research in the 1950's and 1960s.

Case Western Reserve University, a private university in Cleveland, Ohio, was formed in 1967 by the merger of Western Reserve University and Case Institute of Technology. Western Reserve University became a significant center of documentation and information retrieval research and development in the 1955s. This continued into the 1960s with the name Case Western Reserve University.

History

Western Reserve University President recruited Jesse Shera from the Chicago Graduate Library School and charged him to improve an existing school of librarianship.

Shera recruited Margaret Egan.

In 1955 Shera hired Allen Kent and James W. Perry who brought their CIA "metals" research grant and a Center for Documentation and Communication Research was established. Shera, Kent and Perry became involved in considerable controversy.

Perry left and in 1960 joined the University of Arizona. In 1963 Kent left for the University of Pittsburgh. Shera remain until he died in 1982. The school was closed on 1983 [?].

Activities

Egan and Shera developed the study of social epistemology.and Egan

Perry and Kent came to Western Reserve in 1955. They founded the Center for Documentation Communication Research. They were involved in 5 year project sponsored by the American Society for Metals. They tested the feasibility of mechanized searching in the field of metallurgy. During this project, they processed about 20,000 metallurgical papers from current literature, encoded abstracts machine searching, and based editing and encoding of abstracts on generalized as well as specialized meaning.

In 1955, Perry designed and constructed the WRU Searching Selector. The Selector could be programmed to perform scanning operations which were defined by boolean algebraic functions. Using the multiple search feature, one could search up to 10 questions during the scanning of one library tape. The Selector was designed with electromagnetic ray circuitry.

In 1958, General Electric contracted to construct commercial version of the Selector. Instead, GE produced a general purpose computer which emulated the Selector design and permitted searching of the telegraphic abstracts. GE spent the next two years refining and increasing the rate of abstracting and indexing. The feasibility of this study led to the establishment of operating information retrieval service in 1960, which offered retrospective service and current awareness service as well as bibliographies and prefabricated packages of abstracts of general interest topics. This system came to be known as the Mark I Information Retrieval Service. 1961, CWRU undertook a project to determine the feasibility of developing a mechanized information service for educational media research (EMRIC). The object of the information service was to develop an information retrieval system which would permit the detailed analysis and selective dissemination of educational research materials based on individual requests. This objective was achieved by developing pilot system, testing and evaluating the system at various stages of development, and using the results of the tests and evaluations to improve the pilot system. This pilot system influenced the development of ERIC.

History

Activities

Further reading