BP'S EXPERIENCE WITH A COMPUTER‐BASED INFORMATION SYSTEM Available to Purchase

Since 1962 The British Petroleum Company Limited has been subscribing to the American Petroleum Institute's (API) Abstracts of Refining Literature. This service, which provides abstracts in both bulletin and card form from a wide range of petroleum and petrochemical sources, proved extremely useful, and rapidly became the basis for the General Information Service at the BP Research Centre, Sunbury. Because of this, when the API decided that from 1964 onwards their abstracts would be indexed by a computer‐based co‐ordinate indexing system, it was agreed that we would attempt to make as full a use as possible of the new facilities offered. This paper is a record of our attempts to use two aspects of the system—searching by computer, which involves the use of an IBM 1401, and preparing a computer tape from our own indexing, using a 1401 and a 7094.