James Whitney Perry

James Whitney Perry (1907-1971) was an American information retrieval specialist.

Life

James Whitney Perry was born on October 21, 1907. He studied chemical engineering at North Carolina State College (BS 1927; MS 1928), at MIT (SM 1931) and the Technical Universities of Stuttgart and Berlin-Charlottenberg (1932-1933). During the 1930s he helped develop the first low-cost synthetic detergent at the National Aniline Division of Allied Chemical. After wartime research on explosives at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, he initiated work on more efficient library and literature searching at MIT. He was later Director of the Center for Documentation and Communication Research at the School of Library Sciences at Western Reserve University. In 1960 he joined the College of Engineering at the University of Arizona. He died on December 24, 1971.

Contributions

James Perry worked closely with Allen Kent in a series of projects to develop computer-based document storage and retrieval systems. A distinctive development was their "Semantic factoring" using structured codes derived from natural language but with a syntactic role indicator inserted (an "infix").

Perry also promoted the use of punch cards and telegraphic abstracts.

Publications

Perry is credited with 15 books, more than 100 papers and several patents. Many are listed in Google Scholar. [1]

• "Machine literature searching X. Machine language; factors underlying its design and development." With A. Kent & M. M. Berry. American Documentation 6, no 4 (1955): 242–254. doi:10.1002/asi.5090060411.
• Punched cards, their applications to science and industry. Ed. with R. S. Casey. New York: Reinhold, 1951. Larger later ed, 1958.
• "The new look in library science." Applied Mechanics Reviews. 9, no 11 (Nov 1956): 457-460. Reprinted in: Readings in special librarianship. Ed. H. S. Sharp. New York: Scarecrow Press, 1963, pp 606-622. [2]
• Centralized information services, opportunities and problems. With A. Kent. Cleveland, OH: Western Reserve University, Center for Documentation and Communication Research, 1958.(Pub. no. 1958-2).
• Tools for machine literature searching: semantic code dictionary, equipment, procedures, [edited by] J.W. Perry and Allen Kent. New York: Interscience Publishers, 1958.
• "Defining the query spectrum – the basis for developing and evaluating information-retrieval methods." IEEE Transactions on Engineering Writing and Speech 6, no 1 (1963): 20-27.
• Document selection methods. A general analysis. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona, Systems engineering Dept., 1963. [3] Also published in: Readings in special librarianship. Ed. H. S. Sharp. New York: Scarecrow Press, 1963, pp 507-573. [4]

Offices

• American Documentation Institute. President, 1957.
• American Chemical Society. Division of Chemical Literature. Co-organizer and President.

Awards

American Institute of Chemists. Honorary Fellow.

Further reading

• Obituary. Journal of Chemical Documentation 12, no 1 (Feb 1, 1972): 69. [5]
• Burke, Colin B. America's Information Wars: The untold story of information systems in America's conflicts and and politics from World War II to the Internet age. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 2018. Includes details of Perry's life and work.
• "Perry, James Whitney." In: Encyclopedia of library and information science. Vol. 22, (1977): 66-68. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc.
• Keswick, Thomas A. "James W. Perry." PBWorks. UCLA. [6]