ACCESS

[Music] [Music] [Applause] The significance of computerized information systems might seem to be an abstract concern. But on the contrary, they are solving the very practical problem of the overabundance of information. >> Thousands of articles are published in medical journals each year. How can a doctor find what he needs without wasting time? There are hundreds of thousands of teachers in this country. How can we exchange our discoveries in the classroom? >> There are hundreds of jobs available. Which one is right for me? >> 500 restaurants. Each has its own menu. >> 30 airlines flying a,000 flights. >> 700 houses for sale. >> 18 paid vacations. >> 400 campgrounds, >> 600,000 products, >> 1300 newspapers, >> 15 theaters, >> 52 weeks. How can you make a decision? >> There's too much to choose from. >> What is relevant? >> What is irrelevant? Today, computerized information systems are providing easy access to information. [Music] Computers are like most tools. They can be used for a wide variety of tasks. Originally designed for computation, they are now being used to help you gain access to information, which is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The magnitude of the job may require some assistance. Unfortunately, traditional tools are not very effective, but computerized information retrieval systems offer a quick, powerful tool that makes short work of an otherwise difficult task. [Applause] [Music] These systems will do more than find one needle. They will retrieve many needles, giving the searcher a small, relevant pile to choose from. [Music] One example is the dialogue system at the Office of Education, San Monteo County, California, where specialists answer requests for information from school teachers. Using the retrieval system, they search a database containing over a 100,000 documents. Rapidly, the file is narrowed down to a small, pertinent subset. Five to 10 of the most relevant documents are chosen and microfich copies are sent to the teachers. [Music] Descriptions of more than a million and a half satellite photographs of the Earth make up one of the databases of the NASA system. Each photograph is recorded as a citation, including location, date, cloud cover, type of terrain, and other features. Geologists, ecologists, aronomists, and other physical scientists can then easily determine which photographs pertain to their research. Once identified, reproductions are sent to them for their use. [Music] Another system in use at the House of Representatives handles more than 24,000 bills considered by Congress annually. Yes, I I understand the problem you're having. Let me check and find out where the bill is. I've forgotten just what happened on that. Just a second. Hold on. Will you please? >> Bill status office. Patty Costa. May I help you? >> Hi. Yes. I I need the information on the railroad retirement bill. >> I thought we'd pass that last spring. Can you check it for me, please? >> One moment, please. >> Yes. >> May I ask your office, please? >> Yes. I'm I'm Congressman Pete McCloskey, California. >> Believe the bill you would be interested in is HR 7200. That bill was introduced by Congressman Staggers and reported out of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee on May 22nd. It passed the House by a vote of 387 to5. On June 19th, it passed the Senate by a voice vote and after completing conference was signed by the president on July 10th. >> It is now public law number 93-69. >> Fine. Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> Hello. Hi. Let me tell you what happened. In April 1973, Congressman Wayne Hayes announced the introduction of this new information service. Within 6 months, the bill status office was handling more than 800 calls a day from congressmen, government employees, and the public. It might seem that information travels only from the database to the user. However, the Spire system at Stanford University allows users to put information into their own databases. These can then be made available to the entire community of users. An example is a constantly growing restaurant file created and maintained by student gourmets. This file contains the name, location, price range, type of food, and criticisms of each restaurant. After a careful search of the database, a prospective diner can make an informed choice based on the experience of others. Here the leader system at Lehigh University is being used to demonstrate a simple search. The request is entered in language comfortable for the searcher. The system takes the major words in the request and immediately displays phrases containing those words. The searcher studies the phrases to decide which are most suitable. Abstracts of documents can then be displayed to see if they match the searcher's needs. Reading these may suggest other phrases or the searcher may ask to have a list of related phrases shown again. The searcher goes through the procedure of looking at phrases, then examining documents, repeating this process until satisfied. With the leader system and most others, a searcher typically spends 15 to 30 minutes at the terminal in order to retrieve about 50 documents. Another approach to searching encourages the user to break the request up into its basic concepts by grouping synonyms into sets. Then by intersecting them, it's easy to see how many documents can be retrieved. If there are too many, it's possible to get only the most recent by applying a qualification like date after 1968. Concepts can be narrowed, broadened, or recombined until the searcher is satisfied. [Music] Just as with any powerful tool, education is necessary in order to use an information system effectively. Instruction works best if it is personally furnished the moment the need arises. Because there is a need, new systems are coming on the market every day. While each retrieval system is different from every other, they have a lot in common, it helps to think of them in terms of their structural components. The system interface provides the means of communication between a user and the information stored in a database. The users of these systems, scientists, lawyers, doctors, businessmen and students must use terminals for their part in the communication. A doctor, we must have a terminal. [Music] Thank you. [Music] Now let's consider the databases which fall into three categories. Document retrieval is concerned with retrieving sets of individual records. Management information processing is concerned with retrieving and combining records into reports and graphs. Question answering is concerned with providing specific answers to a wide variety of questions. Presently, the functional needs of document retrieval are largely known. Management information processing is less well understood and question answering remains in the research stage. In the future, as their functions increasingly overlap, the differences between these three will almost disappear and generalized systems will emerge. Various media are used for storing the information in a database. While tapes are used for batch retrieval, interactive retrieval relies upon discs, drums, and data cells [Music] for all types of users and databases. The important characteristic of interactive retrieval is the quick interchange of information with the system interface providing the necessary means of communication. [Music] These systems have been designed to operate on many different computers. The performance of this hardware ought to be unobtrusive, freeing the user to concentrate on the task of retrieval. [Music] History has shown that the development of transportation technology encouraged the growth of our physical communities. Likewise, the development of communication technology stimulated the expansion of our intellectual communities. [Music] We can see evidence of this development in the evolution of magazines. Originally oriented toward general information for a large general public, they have been largely replaced by many special interest magazines which reach smaller but more actively involved special interest groups. [Music] We may soon be seeing similar developments in news media. Instead of mass duplication of news for a general public, it may be possible for people to receive news in a way which reflects individual preferences for subject material. [Music] The problem for the future is reducing the cost of searching. Laser technology is one approach which reduces the cost of storing each bit of information by allowing trillions of bits to be stored in the space the size of a refrigerator. [Music] Today, searching costs range from $25 to $100 an hour. Networking would allow many people to share this expense. Timeet is an example which connects people to computers by phone. Another is the ARPA network which ties individual computers together. In the future, additional networks will reach many more communities. >> Yes, it is the first. As access to systems continues to increase, the professional intermediary will remain important. Two heads are better than one for solving problems. >> Hi, I'd like a reservation for a campground if you serve. >> When did you want to go? >> You're pretty >> for two nights. >> Three nights except you can only go so far. It is also likely that central information locations will develop where a person can pay a small fee to have a professional help with the retrieving. >> We still have campsites available for those nights. >> Okay. Well, we have two cars at once. >> Good afternoon, TWWA reservations. >> Let me see if it's coming in on time today. As use of information systems becomes popular, there may not be enough intermediaries to meet the demand. >> Eventually, people will become accustomed to doing their own searching. An example of this is an experimental terminal in the corner of a record store in Berkeley, California. It is operated by a cooperative and presently is free to the public. Eventually, they hope to build a user community large enough to be self-supporting while charging only nominal fees. >> And now, if you're not interested in that one, you could also put in an ad that you're looking for one. You want to do that? >> Well, this time I was actually playing around with it, but um I think that I might use it in the future for when I might be looking for an apartment or something like that. Sure. >> Uh, >> you want to look for something or do you want to add or >> I want to find find gigs or auditions in a in a band, a certain type of band. >> Oh. Do are you part of a band that's looking for jobs? >> I'm I'm alone looking for an established >> looking for a band. I see. Okay. In that case, what what do you play? >> Guitar, jazz. >> You can get pretty much down to what you want. you know, if there's anything that you want in that's been fed into the computer, you know, you're likely to find it very easily. The old system was to have a lot of pieces of paper on the well, there's still a few, but it would there were many more and it was very chaotic and difficult to find exactly what you're looking at. There's no kind of order to it. You have to just look around at random and you know, this is pretty good. I wish I mean there should be computers like this in in a lot of places you know so anybody any musician in town is uh I mean I don't I don't know how many people know about this [Applause] because of the number of situations where information is needed to solve problems people are going to continue pooling their knowledge interactive information retrieval systems will increasingly reduce the time and effort needed to gain access to Do this information. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] You [Music] are. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]