Pauline Atherton Cochrane

Pauline Atherton Cochrane (1929-2024) was an American librarian and author.

Portrait of Pauline Cochrane — Pauline Cochrane

Life

Pauline Anna Blazina Atherton Cochrane was born in 1929 in Argo, Illinois. She studied at Lyons Township Junior College, 1947-1949, then at Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois, 1949-1951, earning earned a BA in social science. Her first professional job was as an indexer at the Corn Products Refining Company. She received an MA in library science from Rosary College (now Dominican University), River Forest, Illinois, and worked as a reference librarian at the Chicago Public Library and as an assistant professor of library science at Chicago Teacher's College (later Chicago State University), 1956-1958. Cochrane also undertook doctoral study at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School.

In 1960 she was made Associate Director of the Documentation Research Project at the American Institute of Physics where she worked on A Project for the Development of a Reference Retrieval System for Physicists for the next four years. She differentiated how information retrieval would be performed by physicists as researchers versus physicists as authors using four facets which were in use at the American Institute of Physics until 2009. These facets were:

property (being studied)
object (of study)
method (of inquiry)
type of research (experimental, theoretical, or both).

Using bibliometrics, Cochrane was able to improve coverage of physics journals in Physics Abstracts using automated techniques.

She became a professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies for many years, retired in 2008, and died on July 29, 2024 in Arthur, Illinois.

Contributions

Cochrane was a leading researcher in the campaign to redesign catalogues and indexes to provide improved online subject access and a respected teacher and theorist of cataloging, indexing, and information access."

For the UNESCO UNISIST program she prepared guidelines for organizing training courses, workshops, and seminars in technical information and documentation.

Cochrane was a co-founder of the Classification Research Study Group in the late 1950s, a group devoted to "the intellectual/theoretical development of knowledge organization" based on Ranganathan's Library Research Circle in India and the Classification Research Group in England.

Consultant to many organizations. As an UNESCO (UNISIST program) consultant, she prepared guidelines for organizing training courses, workshops, and seminars in technical information and documentation.

She edited the Handbook on Information Systems and Services for Developing Countries. She continued in her work to help librarians learn how to use "newer" technology to help patrons find information and created a six part continuing education series for the American Library Association's magazine American Libraries. Entitled Modern Subject Access in the Online Age [1]

Publications

A test of the factor-analytically derived automated classification method applied to descriptions of work and search requests of nuclear physicists : report (1965) by Pauline Atherton and Harold Borko
Humanization of knowledge in the social sciences (1973) by Pauline A. Cochrane
Putting knowledge to work an American view of Ranganathan's Five laws of library science (1973) by Pauline A Cochrane and S R Ranganathan.
Interfaces in computer-based bibliographic searching. (1976) by Pauline A. Cochrane
Handbook for information systems and services (1977) by Pauline Atherton
Books are for use : final report of the subject access project to the Council on Library Resources. (1978) by Pauline Atherton
"Modern subject access in the online age." American Libraries 15 (1984). [2]
Librarians and online services (1978) by Pauline Atherton and Roger W. Christian
Improving LCC and DDC for use in online catalogs and shelflists. (1989) by Pauline A. Cochrane
Visualizing Subject Access for 21st Century Information Resources: Papers Presented at the Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing. (1998) by Pauline A. Cochrane, Eric H. Johnson, and Sandra K. Roe, eds.

Offices

American Society for Information Science. Treasure, 1964-1965; President, 1971.
National Academy of Sciences--National Research Council. Committee on International Scientific and Technical Information Programs (CISTIP).

Honors

American Society for Information Science.Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award, 1981; Award of Merit, 1990.

Papers

Syracuse University Library, Special Collections Department (Syracuse, NY). Pauline Atherton Cochrane Papers: personal/professional papers, 1966-1986; oral history interview of Cochrane. Finding aid [7]