Claire Schultz

Claire Schultz (1924 - 2015) was an American documentalist.

Life

Claire Kelly Schultz was born November 17, 1924 in Etters, PA. Completing high school early, she obtained a BS in chemistry and biology, with a minor in mathematics at Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA, in 1944 at age 19. After a year of hospital work, she was briefly in medical school.

From 1946 to 1948, Schultz worked at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia. Initially hired as a librarian, she soon became a laboratory assistant. In 1948, she found a higher-paying job as a librarian at Sharp & Dohme in Glenolden, Pennsylvania (later Merck, Sharp & Dohme). Influenced by Calvin Mooers, she developed a subject dictionary for indexing scientific journals and Sharp & Dohme scientists. She also used Boolean "and," "or," and "not" searches using punch cards and a IBM 10 Electronic Statistical Machine [1]. She received an MS in library science at Drexel University in 1952.

In 1957 she worked with Eugene Garfield on Current Contents and other projects and in 1958 she joined John Mauchly at Sperry Rand Univac Corporation and worked on information retrieval research until 1961.

In the early 1960s, Schultz was involved in the automation of the Armed Services Technical Information Agency (ASTIA) and developing specifications for the MEDLARS/MEDLINE system of the National Library of Medicine. From 1961 to 1970 she worked for the Institute for the Advancement of Medical Communication, as a consultant, 1970-1972, and as Professor of Information Science and Director of Libraries at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1973-82. Simultaneously, she was a professor at Drexel University, 1961-70. She died May 28, 2015 in Line Lexington, PA.

Contributions

In addition to a broad engagement with the development of documentation, Claire Schultz:

Achieved Boolean searching using punch cards and electronic equipment;
Developed of a thesaurus for information science;
Was among the first to pay attention to the history of documentation; and
Developed early information science education.

Publications

Several publications are listed in her oral history transcript pp 61-61. [2]

"An application of random codes for literature searching." In: Punched Cards. 2nd ed. Ed by R. Casey & J. W. Perry. New York: Reinhold, 1958, pp. 232-247.
"Inaugural address of the incoming president." American Documentation 13, no 1 (1962): 129-131.
"A generalized computer method for information retrieval." American Documentation 14, no. 1 (1963): 39-48.
"Comparative indexing: Terms supplied by biomedical authors and by document titles." With Wallace L. Schultz, and Richard H. Orr. American Documentation 16, no. 4 (1965): 299-312.
"History of ADI – a sketch." American Documentation 20, no. 2 (1969): 100-112.
H. P. Luhn: Pioneer of information science – Selected works, ed. by C. K. Schultz. New York: Spartan Books, 1968.
Information science thesaurus. [Philadelphia]: Drexel Institute of Technology, 1966 [i.e. 1967]. Revised as: Thesaurus of information science terminology. Washington: Communication Service Corp., 1968. Also: Completely rev. and expanded ed. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1978.
"History of the American Documentation Institute – A sketch." With Paul L. Garwig. American Documentation 20, no 2 (April 1969):100-112.
Oral history interview with Claire K. Schultz, 1997. (Oral history no 0161.) 1997. Science History Institute. [3]

Awards

American Society for Information Science. Award of Merit, 1980 (ASIS)

Offices

American Documentation Institute. President, 1962.

Papers

University of Minnesota. Charles Babbage Institute. Claire K. Schultz papers. CBI 86. 1950-1980. [6]