PROBLEMS OF The INDIVIDUAL USER

To avoid confusion, I will start by saying that I intend to use the word ‘user’ in a different contest to that in which it has been used by Dr Matthews and other speakers. Previous speakers have discussed problems of organizations such as ICI, Shell and UKCIS who are interested in operating magnetic tape services. They have therefore considered the user as the organization operating the magnetic tape service. However, the users whom I will be discussing are the individual research scientists for whom a profile is written, who receives a list of titles or abstracts, and who in some cases goes to the actual documents and possibly extracts useful information from those documents. I have some doubts, however, whether the discussion of the two types of user in the same meeting is a reasonable combination as my own comments will obviously be from a rather different point of view to that of previous speakers.