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Melvin Sherman Day

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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 Chemist, 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 [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.

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, TN; 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

  • (1960). 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.
  • "Factors in building an operational information program." Journal of Chemical Documentation 7, no 2 (1967): 107-109.
  • "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 [1]

Offices

  • American Society for Information Science. International Relations Committee, Chairman, 1972.
  • White House Committee on Scientific and Technical Information (COSATI), Chairman, 1971-1972.
  • Federal Library Committee's Executive Committee. Chairman.

Offices

NATO Technical Information Panel 1960-70, 1979-82; Chemical Abstracts Advisory Board 1964-68; ASIS Pres. 1975; International Council of Scientific Unions Abstracting Board 1977-?; UNESCO various advisory boards 1977-83; Board of Visitors, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Library and Information Science 1977-83.

Awards

Day received seval wards 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.

Further reading

Papers

  1. Most of the papers from the government agencies were retained by those agencies. A phone conversation with Melvin Day, 6/96 indicated that no decision has been made on the disposition.
  2. Chemical Heritage Foundation (online)
  3. Oral history interview conducted by Robert V. Williams, 15 July 1997: https://digital.sciencehistory.org/works/r207tq10k
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