Melvin Sherman Day

Melvin Sherman Day (1923-2013) was a leader of US federal information services.

Life

Melvin Sherman Day was born on January 22, 1923 in Lewiston, Maine. He earned a BS in Chemistry from Bates College, Lewiston in 1943. After working as a chemist at Metal Hydrides Inc., 1943-1944, he joined the US Army Corps of Engineers, 1944-1946, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1946. He become Chief, Technical Information Services Division in 1956, then Director of the Technical Information Division at AEC headquarters, 1958-1960.

Day moved to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1960 as Deputy Director, Office of Technical Information and Education; Director, Technical Information Division in 1962; and Deputy Assistant Administrator for Technology Utilization at NASA in 1967. He transferred to National Science Foundation as Head of the Office of Science Information Service in 1970; then in 1972 to the National Library of Medicine where he became Deputy Director.

Day became Director of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in 1972 and retired from federal service in 1982. He also served as vice-president for information clearinghouses at the Information Technology Group, 1982-1984; vice-president for business development at Research Publications, Inc., 1984-1986; and Senior Vice President of Herner and Company, 1986-1988. He died August 3, 2013 in Weatherford, Texas.

Contributions

In an interview with ISU, Day explained that in 1947, "I was involved in reviewing Manhattan Project documents so that they could be declassified. Within a short period of time, it became obvious to the Atomic Energy Commission that since they had all this material, it had to be organized so it could be made available. That was how the AEC information program got started." AEC was located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. They used IBM punch cards for indexing. Records were stored on microcards. When he joined NASA in 1960, they adopted microfiche and tapes: "In 1964 NASA contracted with Lockheed to produce a software package called NASA/RECON which tied together NASA centers in an online information retrieval environment in 1965" (Day, 1983).

Day solidified the notion of an integrated information clearinghouse. In 1972, Day became the Deputy Director of the National Library of Medicine [NLM] where he helped build the Lister Hill Center and develop MEDLARS and MEDLINE as online systems (see History of Medline), specifically:

"In the late 1960’s, the NLM also began the distribution of Index Medicus citation data through the production of computer data tapes. These tapes were distributed to libraries and organizations which provided localized computer access to the citation data. In 1971, NLM began providing access to Index Medicus content via the MEDLARS onLINE (MEDLINE) system, which utilized specialized telecommunications systems. This system provided access to medical journal citations, published from 1966 and forward, that were included in Index Medicus. Accessing MEDLINE required training in the command line syntax used to search the database" (Oral History, 1997).

Day also was responsible for making the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) database available for online searching. His oral history interview includes "a discussion of his communications venture, influential teachers during his career, and the future of information science."

Publications

Numerous publications are listed in Google Scholar. [1]

Technical information for nuclear plant activities. US Papers: Held June 20-26, 1960, 13.
"New indexing pattern for Nuclear Science Abstracts. American Documentation 11, no 2 (1960): 120-127.
"Local Access to the Aerospace Technical Literature." Aslib Proceedings 15, no 7 (1963): 211-217.
"The Scientific and Technical Information Program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration." Journal of Chemical Documentation 3, no. 4 (1963): 226-228.
"Factors in building an operational information program." Journal of Chemical Documentation 7, no 2 (1967): 107-109.
"National planning of information services." With A. Aines. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 10 (1975): 1-42. [2]
"ISU Interviews II: Melvin S. Day." Information Services & Use 3 (1983): 325-331. ISU Interviews II.
"National information policy: The broader context." Government Information Quarterly 6, no 2 (1989): 159-163.
Oral history interview. Science History Institute, 1997. [3]

Offices

American Society for Information Science. International Relations Committee, Chairman, 1972; President, 1975.
White House Committee on Scientific and Technical Information (COSATI), Chairman, 1971-1972.
Federal Library Committee's Executive Committee. Chairman.
NATO Technical Information Panel 1960-70, 1979-82.
Chemical Abstracts Advisory Board 1964-68.
International Council of Scientific Unions. Abstracting Board 1977-?
UNESCO. Various advisory boards 1977-83;
University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Board of Visitors, 1977-83.

Awards

Day received several awards including:

Atomic Energy Commission. Sustained Superior Performance Award, 1960 .
NASA. Exceptional Service Award, 1971.
US Public Health Service. Superior Service Award, 1976.
American Association for the Advancement of Science. Fellow, 1982.

Papers

Most of the papers from the government agencies were retained by those agencies.