CLASSIFICATION IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL: THE TWENTY YEARS FOLLOWING DORKING

My contact with Herbert Coblans was limited, alas, to our shared concerns in the field of subject indication. He first sought me out in the early 1960s, ostensibly to find out about the indexing methodology of British Technology Index, then with its birth agonies not too far behind it, but more probably to give moral support. From such a quarter this meant a great deal. I had, for some reason, expected to find him a mechanizing man, to whom I would be required to hand over copious rudimentary enlightenment on subject indication questions, but this was quite wrong. It was I who soon found myself on the receiving end of the enlightenment process.