The Information Explosion; or, Redundancy Reduces the Charge!

The information explosion has been blamed for the backlogs in li· braries and information centers and for the inability of these centers and libraries to provide relevant information quickly. It has been used to justify the use of automation. An examination of the literature since the early fifties has shown that the library world has been aware of the problem, but has done very little about it. Some preliminary experiments reveal extensive dual publication between technical reports and journal articles; dual indexing and announcement have also contributed to what is more properly called a paper explosion. Methods of decreasing dual publication are suggested.