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Calvin Mooers Draws the Distinction Between "Information Retrieval" and "Information Warehousing"

1951

In 1951 Calvin N. Mooers, whose Zator Company was the first information retrieval company, and who had coined the term "information retrieval" in 1950, issued a report entitled Making Information Retrieval Pay, Zator Technical Bulletin 55.

From this report I quote:

"II - INFORMATION RETRIEVAL vs. INFORMATION WAREHOUSING

"Information retreival must be distinguished from another operation performed on information. This is the 'information warehousing' operation, which is the orderly receipt, cataloguing and storage of information. Almost every library does a highly efficient and satisfactory job of information warehousing. This is fortunate, since successful operation of information retrieval--discovery and use of information--depends upon competent information warehousing. On the other hand, merely to warehouse a large collection of information does little to aid the User to discover the information he needs. Here we have a prevalent fallacy of the libraries."(p.3)

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