James Whitney Perry

1907-1971

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WORKED AT: MIT; WRU

OTHER INFORMATION: With Casey, Perry edited Punched Cards: Their Application to Science and Industry; Stressed information was polydimensional; Semantic factoring and use of role indicators for telegraphic abstracts provided linguistic foundation for his Searching Selector. His interests included: scientific Russian, documentation methods, synthetic detergents, military propellents. He worked at: Director, Center for Documentation and Communication, WRU; He also worked at: Chemist; Prof. Systems Engineering, Univ. of Arizona; Modern Language Dept., MIT.

He was a pioneer in IR systems, establishing a new approach to intellectual organization of knowledge. He helped to standardized language in documentation selection. He was a leader in investigating subject analysis, the coding of subject terms, and their relationship to information retrieval. Perry held several patents. He was concerned with problems of scientific bibliography and information retrieval. He advocated the mechanization of literature searching. He was a driving force behind the ACS's committees exploring the use of punch card machines for automatic indexing and information retrieval.

For a brief obituary see this link: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/c160044a601

AWARDS:

OFFICES: ADI/ASIS Pres. 1957

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INCLUDES: No personal papers have been retained by Perry's family. Some papers may still be at MIT and WRU.

FINDING AID:

SOURCE: Phone conversation with Mrs. Perry, 6/95.