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A Research Agenda for Scientific and Technical Information

Past research on information users and nonuscrs, in-
formation needs, information access, and information or-
ganization and management has tended to be noncumula-
tive, repetitive, descriptive, and lacking in generalization
and in the use of inferential statistics. Other striking char-
acteristics of past research are that it often depicts a par-
ticular point in time, does not disclose trends over time,
relies solely on one means of data collection (generally a
self-reporting survey), and varies greatly in quality. Much
of the research is neither comparative nor cross cultural.

An acquired body of research is vital to the devel-
opment of theory and the solution of professional prob-
lems; to the formation of tools and methods for analyzing
organizations. services, environments, and behaviors; for
determining the cost and benefits of information products,
services, and systems; for establishing and developing the-
ories upon which to base practice; and for contributing
paradigms. models, and radically new coneeptualizations
of library and information science phenomena.

On 7-9 April, the NATO Advisory Group for Aero-
space Research and Development (AGARD) Technical
Information Panel (TIP) conducted a workshop in Lis-
bon, Portugal, to develop a research agenda on issues
related to scientific and technical information (STI) man-
agement (funding, production, collection, organization,
and transfer of STI) and policy (legislation, organizational
practices, decisions).

The Workshop began in a plenary session, during
which each of the Chairmen presented a white paper on
the particular aspect for which he was tasked. Workshop
participants were then divided into three groups, to discuss
the three categories of interest, and develop and establish
an agenda for which R&D is essential.

The three papers, included in this report as Chap-
ters 2, 3, and 4, have incorporated the thrusts and results of
the workshop discussions. Chapter 5, titled The AGARD
TIP Research Agenda for Scientific and Technical Infor-
mation (STI), is a synthesis of the Workshop. Chapter 6
contains additional topic areas meriting investigation; this
is based on what each workshop attendee considered to
be the single, most important research topic.