Ben-Ami Lipetz

Ben-Ami Lipetz (1927-2019) was an American information scientist.

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Life

Ben-Ami Lipetz was born March 14, 1927 in Fargo, North Dakota, and grew up mostly in New York city. After a year in the US Navy he graduated in Mechanical engineering from Cornell in 1948. He then worked for the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island to help publish research reports concerning the peaceful applications of nuclear energy. In 1953 he worked for the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, OH, helping to establish the manufacture of titanium for the aeropspace industry. He also organized and managed the creation of an index to the 16 volume proceedings of the United Nation's First International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy.

In 1959 he joined a new research and manufacturing company, Itek, in Lexington, MA, and was concerned with the creation and of science citation indexes. In the early 1960s Lipetz worked for the American Physical Society to determin whether to create a citation index for physics.

In 1966 he worked at Yale University Library under Frederick Kilgour to help prepare for transition to computer methods and managed a major study of the Sterling Library's catalog use and users. He also edited a shaped and edited a new journal Documentation Abstracts (later named Information Science Abstracts) which started publication in 1966.

In 1978 he joined the State University of New York at Albany as a professor and director of their School of Library Science (later Information Science) where he was a founder of their doctoral program. He died October 9, 2019 in Schodack, NY.

Contributions

Lipetz worked at: Brookhaven Lab, Upton, NY 1948-50; Research associate, History of Science Department, Cornell 1951-52; Research assistant, Lab of Nuclear Studies, 1952; Assistant chief, Information Management Division, Battelle 1953-59; Head, Systems Applications Section, Itek Corporation 1959-62; Counsul on Information Management and Research, Carlisle Mass. 1962-66; Head Research Department, Yale Library 1966-?; Editor of Information Science Abstracts. He was a professor at SUNY-Albany

He developed the concept of continuity index based on citation indexing but added a code to indicate by code the reason why a reference had been made. Lipetz was engaged in major study of catalog use in 1960s. He published a work on the nature of scientific discoveries.

He taught and helped found the doctoral program at the University at Albany.

Publications

• The Measurement of Efficiency of Scientific Research. Carlisle, MA: Intermedia, 1965.
• A Guide to Case Studies of Scientific Activity. Carlisle, MA: Intermedia, 1965.
• User Requirements in Identifying Desired Works in a Large Library. Final Report. New Haven, CT: Yale University Library, 1970. Concerning the Sterling Library catalog.
• "Aspects of JASIS authorship through five decades." Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50, no 11 (1999): 994-1003.
• Covert and Overt; Recollecting and Connecting Intelligence Service and Information Science, edited with Robert V. Williams. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2005.

Further reading

• "Ben-Ami Lipetz Obituary" New Haven Register [1]
• "Ben-Ami Lipetz." Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors. Gale, 2001.

Papers

• Yale University Library. Manuscripts and Archives. YRG 32-I, 1965-1974. 27 linear feet. Includes office files of Frederick G. Kilgour and Ben-Ami Lipetz. RU 181, Series Accession 1974-A-009. Finding aid [2]