Introdsscfng Sci-A4ate- A Menu. IMven Microcomputer Software Package for Onffne assd Offlfsw Information Retrfeval. Part 1. The Sci-Mate Personal Data Manager .— ..- —- Number12 March 21, 1983 In 1982, about three million micro- In either case, the next problem is how computers were delivered in the US to file them. alone. I The average number of users While there are many welI-organized easily exceeds double that number. reprint collections, most scientists lose Among them are thousands of scientists their initial enthusiasm for maintaining and scholars who are Current Contents@ them. They start out with the best inten- (CC”) readers. By the end of this tions, but soon abandon any attempt to decade, I estimate that over 90 percent be systematic. PRIMATE was designed of our readers will rely on microcomput- to help scientists keep up with their ers or intelligent terminals to store and reprint files by eliminating the indexing retrieve information. and filing problems’ in the ordinary sense The first time I wrote about ISI@’s of those terms, plan to produce software for microcom- The enthusiastic response to the idea puters we received several hundred let- of a personal reprint management sys- ters—more than on any other subject tem encouraged us to continue the de- I’ve ever dkcussed in CC. The micro- velopment of PRIMATE. PRIMATE I computer system for managing reprint and PRIMA TE H represented the early files I described was designed by A.E. stages of this system. o We have since de- Cawkell, ISI’S former dkector of re- cided to name the system for the main search. Cawkell continues as a consul- audience it will serve-the scientific tant to 1S1. He also publishes a newslet- community. So we changed the name to ter, Information Technology and People Sci-Mate ‘“ to eliminate the implication (CITECH Ltd., P.O. Box 5, Ickenham, that it serves the exclusive needs of those Uxbridge, Middlesex UB1O 8AF, in primate research! It will also serve to England). highlight the fact that the new Sci-Ma te Let’s recapitulate the reprint filing system is significantly advanced over its problem and the solution first proposed predecessors and can be used in con- by PRIMATE, that is, Personal Retriev- junction with MI’s scientific and schol- al of Information by Microcomputer arly data bases. And Terminal Ensemble. Scientists ac- The original system was designed al- cumulate reprints through various most exclusively to deal with the prob- means—writing to colleagues, using re- lem of filing and retrieving personal re- print cards such as Request-A -Printa, print collections in an offline situation. photocopying journals in the library, or Thk dktinction from online means that by ordering tear sheets from 1S1. When it does not have to be operated through a the reprints arrive, you peruse most of centralized time-shared computer sys- them quickly, while a selected group is tem. Each microcomputer has its own read carefully or discussed in your lab. central processing unit (CPU). We are 80 also developing a version of Sci-Mate The Sri-Mate Personal Data Manager which can be used in minicomputer is a data base management system de- systems that serve many terminals in a signed specifically to accommodate tex- single institution. In that situation each tuaf material-especially bibliographic terminal is used in an online mode in re- material. You can, of course, use it to lation to its CPU. store full bibliographic citations. How- In its four-year evolution to Sci-Mate, ever, it can also handle notes and the 1S1 system has become much more abstracts, or comments that you wish to than a reprint fiting system. First, it is a add to help you retrieve them or to personal offline data base management W3htate or sort them once retrieved. system with unique features and capabil- Sci-Mate’s forerunners were designed ities not available in a single package Imainly with reprint coUection manage- elsewhere. Second, it is a system for ac- ment in mind. Sci-Mate itseff has re- cessing and using numerous commercial tained that characteristic. In fact, the online time-shared data bases that does ability to manage reprints may be the not require knowledge of their special function that will be initially the most command languages. The offline and useful to most CC readers. However, its on[ine components are available sepa- usefulness in other record keeping situa- rately or in combination. In a future es- tions wilf become apparent here. say, I’ll d~cuss Sci-Mate’s online capa- Let me make clear that in the follow- bilhies in detail. In this portion of the es- ing discussion the machine readable bib- say, I’ll focus on its offline functions. liographic records are only representa- Figure 1 summarizes these features and tions of the original reprints, letters, or their benefits. other documents. The actual reprints A microcomputer data base manage- are filed separately. The same would be ment system is a software package, that true for correspondence, lab notes, and is, a series of integrated computer pro- medical case reports, unless the fuff text grams which enable you to create and is so short that it constitutes an entire manipulate many types of records. Most document. of the commercially available software To use Sci-Mate as a reprint file packages were designed for use in busi- manager, you have several options. You ness settings. They are commonly used could assign each new reprint a serial to store lists of customers, subscription number. For each reprint, you’d enter records, inventories, etc. They are de- this accession number and a complete signed mainly to handle numeric infor- bibliographic description or summary. mation, and are limited in their flexibil- You could do thk one reprint at a time ityy for handling textual information. or you could have an assistant add the in- Features Benefits Random access storage. Fast access to any stored record. Menu-driven command system. No need to learn a special language. Tutorial subsystem. Sci-Mate lists options for you. Variable length records, You can store textual data of any length. No pre-indexing. You can search any phrase, word, or character alone or in combination. Flexible record layout. You can design your own record format. Report generator. Columnar reports to your specifications. Immediate record/file updates. Records searchable as soon as entered. Eliminates need to create or update lists. Figure 1: Features and benefits of the Sci-Mate ‘“ Personal Data Manager 81 WELCOME TO THE 1S1 SCI-MATE SYSTEM Do you want to: 1, Enter the UNIVERSAL ONLINE SEARCHER 2. Enter the PERSONAL DATA MANAGER 3. Enter or change date 4. Delete the WORK file 5. Receive instructions on the use of SCI-MATE 6. Leave the SCI-MATE system Select a number or enter ? for help: Ftgure 2: This is what you see upon entering Sci-Mute m. formation for a series or batch of papers, Having stored several hundred docu- perhaps after reading CC or as reprints ment descriptions, how do you retrieve arrive each week. them? Sci-Mate is designed to be “user- However, with Sci-Mate you don’t -friendly,” which is computerese for have to assign a number “manually.” “easy to use.” The validity of such a You can use the number that the pro- claim depends upon the amount of artifk gram automatically assigns to each en- cial intelligence built into the system. try. In Part 2 of this essay I’ll describe We believe Sci-Mate is justifiably called how much of this keyboard work can be user-friendly because it is a “menu- eliinated if you choose to input records driven” or multiple-choice system. At by using the online option to “capture” each step the computer asks you a ques- records. tion and presents a short list of options. As the information for each paper For each choice you press one key to is keyboarded, Sci-Mate automatically execute the option or command chosen. adds the new records to the computer’s Figure 2 shows the first Sci-Mate ques- memory. The reprints themselves can be tion after you insert the magnetic floppy fried in numerical order in filing cabinets disk (diskette) on which the program is or loose-leaf binders. If you prefer, in- stored. You are presented with six stead of fiiing numerically, you can file choices. Figure 3 shows what happens the papers alphabetically—either by when you press “2”, the request to author or by subject categories. Howev- search your personal data base. Again er, the serial number system maintains you have six options, one of which sim- your file esaentiaUy in chronological ply takes you back to the beginning. The order, This is handy when you want to first option is the one you can expect to browse through the reprints you ac- use a lot for searching. The second op- quired over a particular time period. tion is used when you want to enter new However, if you prefer to file the actual reprints into the collection. Figure 4 reprints by lecture topics, you can in- shows what you see when you press clude the name or code for the file folder ,4 1!, —“Search the USER file.” as part of the document description. In- Figure 5 shows what you see when you cidentally, as you are keyboarding all press “2”. You enter a search term, th~ information, or capturing it from an- which is used to search the entire file. other fde, it is displayed on the screen This means you do not have to specify for visual verification.