Dissemination and Storage of Scientific Information in the United Kingdom

THE storage and retrieval of scientific information is a subject the study of which has received scant official support in Great Britain; indeed until recently the small volume of research in this field was mostly financed from abroad. Likewise, as stated in the leading article in Nature of May 23, Government support for non-conventional means of dissemination and storage of scientific information is very disappointing. The fact that this information is the basic raw material of a research ‘industry’ with an annual turn-over of several hundred million pounds allows one to sense the seriousness of this lack.