The "tour" draws on regular and "brief communication" refereed articles. At the end of the tour are provided lists of the "Perspectives" and "Special Topic" issues that have appeared in the journal over the years. (See that section for further explanation of the special issues.)
Selections were made with the intent to illustrate the development of research, technology, and thinking in information science over the years. The pages of the journal have formed the crossroads for most, if not all, major researchers in the field. Famous researchers from outside information science proper, such as Noam Chomsky, Herbert Simon, and George Miller have also appeared in JASIS.
Furthermore, every significant area of research in information science is well represented in the pages of the journal. Information retrieval system design and evaluation, description of operational information systems and services, indexing theory and evaluation, search strategy, information seeking research, bibliometric analysis, information policy, and the economics of information have all been addressed in JASIS. Despite the journal's reputation for an emphasis on the mathematical and technical, the first user needs study appears in American Documentation as early as 1951.
It is also striking how early many crucial ideas in information science appeared in these pages. H.P. Luhn proposes key word in context indexing in 1960, and selective dissemination of information in 1961-the latter now rediscovered in the age of the World Wide Web as "push" technology. William Goffman and associates propose the use of "metalanguage" in information retrieval systems in 1964 -and mean it in a way close to its current usage. In 1966, Lockheed staff describe a new system that enables a "dialogue" with an "on-line reference retrieval system." Murray Turoff and Starr Hiltz provide a "progress report" on electronic journals in 1982.
User-centered information system design did not start in the 1980's, as some would claim. Rather, it dates at least to Mooers' Law, published in 1960, and Edwin Parker's 1966 argument that "the system should adapt to the receiver or user, rather than the user to the system" (see below under Information Seeking and Needs). Victor Rosenberg's 1974 article calling for the introduction into information science research the "intuitive, the subjective, and the experiential" presages by decades the current wave of interest in qualitative methodology.
Just two more examples will be provided here of these early insights. In 1967, Burton Adkinson and Charles Stearns present a remarkably prescient description and forecast of the information scene. Their three stages of library automation (which actually address far more than just libraries themselves) are an excellent summary of what, in fact, has happened in the years since their article.
Finally, Watson Davis, the founder of this Society (under its original name, the American Documentation Institute), describes in a 1951 article the association's system of "auxiliary publication." This arrangement, first begun in 1936, enabled researchers to send in additional, supplemental, and otherwise unpublished materials to the American Documentation Institute. Other researchers who wished to use this material could then contact the Institute and have a copy made for their own use. The ability to self-publish such supplemental materials is one of the features most praised about the Internet for researchers today. The technology available today is much more supportive for auxiliary publication than was the case in 1936, but the idea was actually implemented back then.
In the early days, the technology for information retrieval was almost unbelievably primitive by current standards. Coordinate indexing was developed by Mor-