The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and Aslib

Abstract

THE leading article in Nature of April 25 points out that the report for 1951–52 of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research does not include a justification for the Department's grant to Aslib, and suggests the possibility of overlapping between Aslib and the Intelligence Division of the Department. It is right to say at once that this possibility is constantly borne in mind by the Council of Aslib, which has the advantage of close and continual contact with the Intelligence Division. Part of Aslib's activity is as a clearing-house between its own members, who include those concerned with information and library techniques in scientific and industrial and also in other fields; part consists in organizing the exchange of information on methods of documentation and publishing the results of investigations into them; part again in the promotion of training in these techniques. These things, it is believed, are outside the present scope of the Intelligence Division. In other activities—some of them carried out under contract with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research—there is danger of overlapping; but it has been kept in mind, and it is hoped with some confidence that it has been avoided.