Chronicles of an information company

The birth and growth of a US West Coast information company is chronicled from its beginning as a part‐time partnership to its status five years later as a small but profitable corporation providing information services to Government agencies as well as graduate students. Documentation Associates provides a search and retrieval service that includes brokering on‐line data‐base searches, and the investment required to set up and maintain this kind of operation is described. Some information‐broker policies are discussed, e.g. service types, pricing methods, and the reasons for the wide disparity in data‐base search prices are examined. The policies of Documentation Associates in the operation of its broker service are presented.