| This study identified, analyzed, and evaluated several major factors that influenced the evolution of U.S. secondary information services and their producers in physical sciences and engineering from 1957 through 1971. Information was obtained primarily through interviews of key personnel at the locations of four producing organizations: The H. W. Wilson Company, Engineering Index, Inc., the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and the Institute for Scientific Information. Additionally, the following products of these organizations were analyzed in great detail: Applied Science and Technology Index, Engineering Index, Nuclear Science Abstracts, and Science Citation Index.;It was found that each service and each producing organization was affected by both external, i.e., environmental factors, and internal, i.e., agency elements. These included the Federal Government, the "new technologies", the force of the marketplace, corporate history, sources of financial support, and the philosophy and practices of management and staff. The degree to which each of the above factors produced changes and influenced the development of each product and producing agency differed, and is discussed in detail in this thesis. A brief Epilogue highlights the continuity and extension, through the 1970's, of the developments that originally occurred during the period studied. |
