A REVIEW OF The MAIN PROBLEMS

All that I wish to do in this talk is to set in some context some of the things that have already been said today, and add a few comments of my own, in order to provide a basis for further discussions. It has been suggested that we ought to declare our interests, which user ‘cap’ we are wearing: I will try to speak as a librarian/information officer, faced with the world literature and its records—what should one provide in order to serve best one's organization's users? And in doing this, of course, one has to keep in mind that the ultimate user is the person who actually wants the information. I was rather struck with Dr Matthews saying that the computer as a tool for information might rival the telephone system in importance, thinking that the telephone is a way of putting one person into communication with another. For we, as information officers, must always remember that this is our job as well, even if through the intermediary of a document. So a computer is only a tool that can aid this person‐to‐person communication. I think, therefore—as was also suggested by earlier speakers—that we should not simply look at magnetic tape files in isolation, but we should think of them as one of the ways in which the multitude of bibliographic references are now recorded—a novel way, a way which offers great opportunities for doing new things, but not to be looked at to the neglect of all the other varieties of bibliographical sources.