PROBLEMS OF REMOTE PROCESSING OF MAGNETIC TAPE INFORMATION FILES

The effective use of machine‐readable information files depends on many factors. Not the least of these is what, for want of a better term, might be described as the ‘physical attributes’ of the materials. Since January 1967 the Chemical Society Research Unit has been operating a current‐awareness service based on magnetic tape versions of the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) publications Chemical Titles (CT), Chemical‐Biological Activities (CBAC) and the ‘Experiment in Selective Dissemination of Information’ (SDI experiment). During this period we have been made acutely aware of the problems of processing magnetic tapes over whose quality we have no control and which originate at a considerable distance from the site where they are finally used. In the hope that an awareness of these problems may assist other potential users of similar materials in planning their activities I shall describe the Unit's experiences in some detail, and suggest some possible courses of action to alleviate some of the difficulties. Where appropriate I will relate the Unit's experiences to those which have been reported to me by three other groups of users of magnetic tape retrieval files: