The Association of Information Dissemination Centers (ASIDIC) formed the Cooperative Data Management Committee to address the problems of information center operators and data base suppliers. The number of operating centers in the U.S. is limited and their future expansion in numbers and in type of services, will depend on the education of users.…

Discusses the developments that have positively or adversely affected abstracting and indexing services over the past several decades, addressing such topics as the impact of computers and the migration from print-on-paper to online information provision. Forecasts for the near and long-term future are made and a reference list is included. (JL)

Describes and evaluates a system that selects key information from an event database by reasoning about event frequencies, frequencies of relations between events, and domain-specific importance measures. The system aggregates similar information and plans a summary tailored to a stereotypical user. (AEF)