An overview of the abstracting
and indexing services in China
Lei Zeng
The first abstracting and indexing (A&l) service in China celebrated its thirty-year birthday in 1988. However, it would be a mistake to consider the growth of A&l services in China in the same way as other countries because A&l services in China not only had to start from zero, but also had a rebirth after a period
of regression; they are not commercial agencies; at the end of 1980s, almost all of the A&l services produced in China are printed versions, while computerized production is in the stage of experiment. It is
the purpose of this paper to present a picture of the development of A&l services in China and identify some of their problems in order to encourage serious attention to their status.
Historical perspective
a period of exploration: 1956-1965
Although the history of abstracting and indexing in
China may be traced to the Han dynasty of 2,000 years
ago, with the rich collection of bibliographical reference
books containing abstracts and indexes, A&I as
individual secondary information services in China were
conceived at the publishing of Machinery Abstracts and
Metallurgical Abstracts in 1957,1 during the second year
of the existence of the national information institution,
the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of
China (ISTIC).
One of the most notable events in the history of A&I in
China was the founding of the National Committee for
Scientific and Technical Literature Compilation and
Translation (NCSTLCT) in 1961. Like the founding of
NFAIS (National Federation of Abstracting and Index
ing Services) of the USA, the impetus toward forming
such a committee was a response to the challenge of
VINITI (All Union Scientific and Technical Institute) of
the USSR, which expanded greatly in the mid-1950s and
was publishing forty Referntivnyi Zhurnal (Journal of
Abstracts) serials2-3 covering most of the fields of pure
and applied science and technology.
The major purposes of the Committee were to develop
co-operative A&I production for the whole country and
to encourage the development of home-produced
secondary services. At that time, in 1961, only abstract
journals translated from Russian were produced,
representing almost half of the abstract journals pro
duced in the USSR at that time.4
During the following five years, A&I services in China
grew steadily under a co-operative plan made by the
Committee. The abstract journals were assigned to
individual information centers according to their par
ticular subject field and collections. The translation and
compilation of abstracts were separately completed in
information centers throughout the country and were
sent to the Committee, which published the resulting
translations of abstract journals and compilations of
individual abstracts under a co-operative plan.
In early 1966, 139 secondary information journals
were registered with the Committee. One hundred of
these were abstract journals, containing more than
700,000 items in 1965.' The remainder were indexes and
annotated bibliographies. The largest index was Index of
S&T literature, which was published in 30 sub-titles and
covered over 6,000 journals world wide.4
The first subject index for the abstracts was published
in 1964. It was a seven-year cumulative index for Metal
lurgical Abstracts with an average indexing depth of
approximately 3.5 index entries per document. Twenty-
seven other annual subject indexes were supposed to be
issued in 1966. However, this work was aborted because
of ten years of turbulence.1
TEN YEARS OF REGRESSION: 1966-1976
As soon as the Cultural Revolution began, all infor
mation serials were forced to cease. The NCSTLCT
disappeared quietly, without any announcement.
After 1972, a few A&I services attempted to restart
their work. However, these products were poorly
organized, with a low level of quality control.
RECOVERY AND RENASCENCE: 1977-1987
When NCSTLCT was reorganized in 1978, there was a
broken framework of A&I services. The situation was
even more severe than that in the 1950s because of the
lack of experienced professionals, the suspension of the
acquisition of documents from outside of the country,
and the disorder of existing A&I services.
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AN OVERVIEW OF THE ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING SERVICES IN CHINA
At the fifth meeting of NCSTLCT in September 1978,
a proposal for establishing a system of secondary infor
mation retrieval serials in the country was debated as
part of the discussion of the 1979-1985 plan. As a result,
the Sub-Committee of Information Retrieval Serials was
founded. It would be in charge of organizing, planning,
and co-ordinating the print products for information
retrieval. The proposal was passed at the seventh meeting
in 1980 and was carried out rapidly in the whole
country.1 By the end of 1986, 219 A&l services were
being produced in China.5 This represents a 291%
increase over the 56 services recorded in 19816 and a 38%
increase over 19834 (see table 1).
Current status
At present there are more than 200 printed secondary
services available in China, published in several sets of
serials which include annotated bibliographies, abstracts,
and indexes (table 2). Most of the important science and
technology (S&T) fields now have their own secondary
services and cumulative indexes.
During the thirty years of existence of A&I services in
China, there has been an expansion in coverage of
bibliographical information in all S&T fields, the
abstracting and indexing processes are approaching
standardization, and computer-aided abstracting and
indexing is being developed. However, many problems
exist, such as duplication of entries, unsatisfactory access
points, time lags, etc. There is neither a core of serials nor
a core system. Therefore, none of the products has an
international status. These aspects retard Co-operation
with other countries and the establishment of computer-
based information retrieval systems in China.
Organizational patterns and interrelationships
PARENT INSTITUTES
It is necessary to understand that A&I services in
China are not commercial agencies; they report to and
get funding from their parent information institutes. All
funding for information services is from the government.
According to 1985 statistics, the total funding of
information services, related basic construction invest
ment, plus some special funding was about RMBY 2.6
billion (US$70 million). From 1980 to 1986 about
100,000 books and 16,000 periodical titles from all over
the world were acquired per year. This represents about
14% of the books and 16% of the periodicals published
throughout the world. In mainland China about 7,000
academic periodicals, 100,000 scientific papers and
reports, and 100,000 other materials are published
yearly.7
The present organizational structure of Chinese infor
mation systems consists of several nationwide systems.
The largest and most important system is the S&T
information institute system. It includes a national S&T
information center (Institute of Scientific and Technical
Information of China: ISTIC) and two parallel branches:
43 specialized information centers of all national
ministries, and their specialized branch centers (these
ministries report to the State Council of China); and 29
general information centers of the provinces and muni
cipalities and 219 information centers of the counties
(these information centers report to the local govern
ments but have professional cooperation with ISTIC).8
The patents information system, a specialized system, is
composed of a national patents information center and
64 provincial and municipal branches. All of them report
to the State Patent Bureau."
The standards information system is another spe
cialized system. It includes a core information center in
the China Research Institute of Standardization, and 150
branch information centers in all of the country."
China Academia Sinica document and information cen
ter system belongs to China Academia Sinica, which is
the highest and largest academic institution in China
with over 4,000 specialized branch institutes in the
country. The Document and Information Center is the
core of this information system. Over 4,000 integrated
library and information centers8 in all specialized
Table 1 Number of A&I services produced in China
Number of services identified
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Table 2 Printed Chinese secondary services serials4
Geograph ic co vertigo Type Material coverage Notes
Bibliography of All foreign
Foreign S&T countries
Literature Collection
Bibliography of All foreign
Foreign Literature countries
Bibliography of
Chinese S&T
Literature
Patents Bulletin
Abstract Journals
People's Republic
of China
World wide
World wide
Bibliography of People's Republic
Books in print of China
in People's Republic
of China
Chinese Journal
and Newspaper
Index
People's Republic
of China
Annotated
bibliography
Annotated
bibliography
Annotated
bibliography
Abstracts &
annotated
bibliography
Abstracts &
annotated
bibliography
Bibliography
Index
Government reports:
proceedings; dissertations;
other special literature
Journal articles; scientific
reports; proceedings;
standards; government
reports
Journal articles; proceedings;
particular subject materials
Patents
All kinds of literature
Books
Collection of ISTIC
Books registered
in State Copyright
Bureau
Articles published in academic Legal publications
journals and newspapers
branches co-operate in acquisition, inter-library loan,
automation, etc. The system serves only users of the
China Academia Sinica.
University and college library systems arc important in
China. In China, there are no private universities or
colleges and the formal higher education was free till
1989. University funding comes from ministries and local
governments, and the library is seen as one of the
important parts of a university.
The public library system includes a national public
library, 33 provincial ones, and over 2,000 local public
libraries.9 The national library and a few provincial and
municipal libraries offer some information services.
CO-OPERATIVE ACTIVITIES
The co-operation among A&I services within China
reflects the information system's setup. Information cen
ters of national ministries and their specialized branch
centers produce abstract journals of their fields so that,
in China, most A&I services of applied science and
technology are produced in the information institute
system.
The China Academia Sinica document and informa
tion center system has been taking responsibility for
developing A&I services for the pure sciences for Chinese
literature. Since 1980, the system has developed 19
internal information networks, which are organized
according to cither the subject fields or geographical
areas. Nine A&I services issued by six of these specialized
networks co-operate in the national secondary informa
tion. A plan to establish a printed set of Chinese A&I
services for maths, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geo
graphy, biology and some newly developing sciences by
the year 1990 has also been announced. Foreign langu
age versions and machine-readable services for these
products will also be developed."1
Many A&I services produced in these two systems
have strong associations with their professional societies
and insist on their discipline-oriented approaches.
However, in the last few years, some services which
address only specific problems (e.g. pollution and
environment protection) have been developed. Most
recently, newer services began to cover social sciences
and humanities literature by the Social Science Docu
ment and Information Centers, which were founded as a
special branch of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The information systems for patents and standards
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AN OVERVIEW OF THE ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING SERVICES IN CHINA
lend to stay with their collection-oriented approaches.
Before 1981, patent secondary information services were
separately produced by information institutes all over
the country, with little co-operation. This resulted in
much duplication of effort and incomplete coverage.
With the founding of the State Patent Bureau in 1981, all
A&I services for patent documents were assigned to the
information center of the Bureau. By 1985, the Patents
Bulletin had been issued in 45 volumes. Since 1986, this
series has included Chinese patents along with the
patents from more than ten countries and international
organizations. The total number of items each year is
approximately 400,000."
University and college libraries and information cen
ters are now contributing to a joint database containing
abstracts of journals published by the universities. Some
of the universities participating are parts of specialized
information networks that produce A&I compilations.
The public library system has been issuing general
bibliographies for books and selected journal and
newspaper articles for over thirty years. There are also a
few public libraries that produce mission-oriented
abstract journals. Public libraries also have some co
operative projects which tend to collection-oriented
approaches, such as union bibliographies for local
history materials and local collections, and other occa
sional publications.
An overall view of the macrocosm of A&I services in
China suggests that coverage is still short of the ideal of
complete co-operation and systemization. There is much
overlap and duplication of effort among the inter-system
A&I services. Take for example the heat treatment field;
almost the same set of abstracts appears in Machine
Building Abstracts (produced by the information center
of the Ministry of Machine-Building Industry) and
Metallurgical Abstracts: Metal Materials (produced by
the information center of the Ministry of Metallurgical
Industry). Meanwhile, some areas are not covered. Fur
ther, as was mentioned in the description of the current
status, there are several parallel A&I serials in China.
Unfortunately, they provide few cross references to each
other. Their overlap and division, as well as their co
ordination of efforts, are not clear.
International co-operation has improved since 1980
through exchanges and agreement between individual
secondary services. In 1984, the National Technical
Information Services (NTIS) in the United States signed
a new direct exchange protocol with China to promote a
greater flow of scientific and technical information
between the two countries. The National Agriculture
Library (NAL) arranged for a group of Chinese
librarians to tour American libraries and A&I services,
including the NAL and the Institute for Scientific Infor
mation (ISI).12
In 1985, at the Chinese Second National Indexing
Symposium, the progress of four international co-opera
tion projects was reported. The Information Institute of
China Nuclear Industry Ministry had a co-operation
project with the International Nuclear Information
System (INIS) to offer English abstracts for some
Chinese journals on nuclear research. The other three
reports were from the information institutes of China
Academy of Agriculture Science, the Ministry of Rail
ways, and the China Academy of Medical Science. As
well, 310 English language abstracts on medical and
aromatic plants were contributed by the South-China
Plant Research Institute of China Academia Sinica to the
Asian and Pacific Information Network on Medical and
Aromatic Plants (APINMAP).13
Characteristics of A &f publications
COVERAGE
Most of China's A&I services are based on transla
tions of the A&I services in other countries. In the first
five years, all Chinese abstract publications (50 titles in
1961) were merely Chinese versions of the Journal of
Abstracts published by VINITI in the USSR.4 Even in
1986, Chinese scholarly publishing made up less than a
third of the total titles in A&I services while the other
two thirds of items were still based on translations. The
ratio of translated items to home-made items was 6.1 to 1
(1,220,000 translated items to 200,000 Chinese items).10 It
is said that only one quarter of the Chinese S&T primary
literature is reported in the secondary information servi
ces.
This situation leads to lowering of the quality of A&I
services and shortens their usage. Firstly, because such
translated A&I products are not supported by a collec
tion of the primary documents, the staff cannot make
selections and adaptations based on knowledge of the
actual literature. Secondly, a translated abstract based
on secondary information is not equal to an abstract of
an original document. There are many possibilities of
misunderstanding the original meaning of a paper. And,
it is often not easy to create an appropriate translation
for the condensed and almost isolated sentences of an
abstract. Thirdly, users are not satisfied with abstracts
which are composed of isolated sentences translated
from all kinds of foreign languages. Also, how valuable
is it to alert users to information in a foreign language
when they can't read it and there are no translations
available? Lastly, it is difficult to find A&I professionals
who not only have specialized knowledge and one or
more foreign languages but also have information
science backgrounds. In fact, this is almost impossible in
China. As a result, a large number of abstractors are
from foreign language schools and have little training in
information processing and no specialized subject
knowledge. Table 3 shows the backgrounds of informa
tion professionals in one ministry. A low percentage had
library and information science backgrounds (less than
102 The Indexer Vol. 17 No. 2 October 1990
AN OVERVIEW OF THE ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING SERVICES IN CHINA
4%), and a rather high percentage had foreign language
backgrounds (29%).14
Time lag
The average time lag between the publication date of
Chinese literature and its appearance in Chinese A&I
services is more than one year,1 but some services include
literature that is two or three years old.15 The time lag is
much longer for translated abstracts because of the
complicated acquisition and translation processes.
Access
Convenience of access to A&I services was neglected
for many years. Because the indexes of the original
publication are no longer useful after translation and
compilation of the abstracts, new indexes are needed.
Unfortunately, most of the A&I services in China did not
offer necessary title indexes and subject indexes at all
until indexes were required by the NCLCT in 1983. So,
for many years, the only subject access was provided by
the tables of contents of abstract journals.
More and more attention has been paid to subject
indexing by professionals since 1983 because it is con
sidered to be a basic element of the computer-based
information retrieval systems which will be established in
China. Three national symposiums on subject indexing
theories and methods have been held by the China
Society for Scientific and Technical Information. Subject
indexing courses have been offered in library schools and
many information centers. In the printed A&I services,
the average indexing depth is 2.5 to 3 entries per item.
The types of entry are mostly pre-coordinatcd subject
headings and single keywords. However, the quality of
the indexes is not good enough. For example, many
index headings refer to fifty or even hundreds of items,
and there are seldom cross-references.
SALES
Sales of printed A&I products do not match expec
tation based on the size of the potential market. Take for
instance, the medical profession. In 1983, there were
196,000 medical units with 4,090,000 professionals,
including 6,547 hospitals in the cities and 2,340 hospitals
in the counties all over the country. However, only 1,732
copies of the Bibliography of Chinese S&T literature:
medical science were sold, and only 1,300 copies of
Bibliography of foreign S&T literature: medical science.
Although this can be partly explained by the lack of
information awareness by the professionals, the publica
tion policies of the services are also responsible. Both of
them divide all items of medical science into fifteen broad
topics. Each has around 330 pages divided into three or
four volumes. Since this service is sold altogether in such
large volume and at an expensive price, and the contents
cover such broad areas beyond the needs of many special
units, sales do not match the expected number of users.
No wonder that in 1984, the Bibliography suffered a loss
of RMBY 303.49 (about $77) for each issue.15
Abstracts and indexes as by-products produced by
non-A&I professionals are developing rapidly. They
include author abstracts, abstracting in publications, and
pre-publication abstracts. Since most of them are based
on the Chinese primary literature, they are very import
ant information sources and are welcomed by the public.
Supports for Adi services
APPROACHES TO STANDARDIZATION
Since the founding of the National Standardization
Technical Committee of Documentation in 1979, 25
national standards have been issued. A national commit
tee and several sub-committees were set up correspond
ing to the format of ISO/TC 46. Sub-Committee No. 6 is
in charge of the standardization of information retrieval
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AN OVERVIEW OF THE ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING SERVICES IN CHINA
services. In addition to carrying out existing ISO
standards, a set of standards relevant to Chinese A&I
services has been created and applied since 1982
(table 4).l5
Table 4 National standards relevant to A&I services
GB3468-83 General rules of compilation and editing
of secondary information publications.
(1983)
GB3469-83 Codes of document types and media.
(1983)
GB3792.1-83 General rules of bibliographical
description. (1983)
GB3793-83 Rules of bibliographical description of
secondary information publications
(1983)
GB3860-83 Rules for subject indexing. (1983)
GB4894-85 Information and documentation
terminology: basic glossary (1985)
GB6447-86 Rules for abstracting. (1986)
GB7714-87 Rules of bibliographical description of
bibliographical references. (1987)
ESTABLISHING CHINESE THESAURI
The development of indexing thesauri started in 1974
when a general thesaurus, Chinese thesaurus, was
designed to provide a working vocabulary in all fields of
human knowledge. This ten-volume thesaurus contains
approximately 109,000 terms; it covers all subjects,
which are organized into fifty-eight broad subject fields.
In the decade 1974 to 1984, approximately twenty
thesauri devoted to special areas were developed. During
the last four years (1985-89), the number of special
thesauri has doubled, while more are being planned or
under development.17
In spite of a later start in thesaurus development than
other developed countries, China benefits a lot from
experiences abroad, as well as from the standardization
of indexing languages in the world. In addition to
implementing international standards and developing
national standards for thesauri, in 1979 the National
Standardization Technical Committee of Documen
tation recommended that all special thesauri should
consider establishing compatibility with the Chinese
Thesaurus. Most of the Chinese special thesauri
developed after 1980 used the Chinese Thesaurus as their
basic reference source; some of them also considered
compatible approaches to other thesauri in related fields.
Almost all thesauri compiled by information centers of
ministries have similar principles in design. They are
post-coordinated, discipline-oriented, and suitable for
both manual and mechanized retrieval.
IMPROVING PRIMARY RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT AND
SHARING
In China, half of all library and information services
are in Beijing, while the rest are unevenly distributed in
large cities and the coastal areas. Co-ordination and co
operation among library and information systems have
been poorly developed, resulting in limited resources on
the one hand and much duplication on the other. For
instance, both the national public library and the
national information institute have acquisitions of
around 10,000 periodicals from other countries, but
more than 5,000 of these titles are duplications. When
the Chinese began having access to improved secondary
services and on-line international bibliographic search
ing, they found that 50%-70% of the primary literature
they searched was not available in China. Using on-line
retrieval systems was just a way to identify biblio
graphies.5
Co-operative activities spread first among some local
information centers and in the internal system of the
China Academia Sinica and later extended to the univer
sity system. In October 1987 a co-ordination committee
on the level of the ministry information centers was
founded, which included members of 11 ministries and
the state bureaux of archives, standards, and patents.
The goals of the committee are to develop co-ordination
of acquisitions and bibliographic announcement, inter-
library loan for foreign publications, and computer-
based information retrieval systems.18
EXPERIMENTS IN AUTOMATIC INDEXING AND ABSTRACTING
The applications of new technology are continuing to
have a significant impact on the production of secondary
products. As soon as the problem of Chinese character
input and output was solved around 1985, micro
computers began to be widely used in information cen
ters. But, the problem of Chinese text recognition and
parsing by computer is still unsolved, so that China has
not been able to benefit from automatic indexing and
abstracting software developed by other countries.
During recent years, many experiments have been
undertaken, such as automatic title indexing and auto
matic indexing, machine translating, automatic multi-
language processing, full-text retrieving, computer-aided
thesaurus construction, and so on. Almost all subject-
indexing experiments were carried out on personal com
puters with software such as dBASE III Chinese version,
and were based on self-established small databases.
The first computer-aided abstract journal was Chinese
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AN OVERVIEW OF THE ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING SERVICES IN CHINA
Medicine Abstracts which was tested from 1982 to 1983
and published from 1984 by ISTIC and the Information
Institute of the State Bureau of Medicine Bureau. It uses
a TK70 computer and is based on a full-text database of
the Computer Retrieval Center for Chinese Medicine
Materials. The current experimental effort of ISTIC is to
produce a computer-aided Bibliography of Chinese Pro
ceedings and a Bibliography for current foreign collec
tions.19
Establishing Chinese machine-readable databases
DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTER-BASED INFORMATION
RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS IN CHINA
The development of computer-based information
retrieval in China may be traced to 1975 with the
experiment of SDI services based on machine-readable
tapes. There was not much improvement until Chinese
user interfaces became available for microcomputers in
the 1980s. By the end of 1982 there were 69 services either
in the experimental or implementation stage. All of them
were based on the 32 machine-readable databases
introduced from foreign countries, such as INSPEC,
GRA, WPI, etc.14 In 1983, a nationwide S&T informa
tion retrieval system was put into the computer appli
cation plan and the software producing plan by the
China State Council. The goal in the period of "the
seventh five-year plan" is to establish an on-line retrieval
network, which will be composed of one national infor
mation center, and several specialized and regional cen
ters, to develop a set of bibliographic, full-text, and fact
databases, and to increase the availability of on-line
retrieval services throughout the country.7
By 1988, databases introduced from other countries
had increased to fifty-two, and these contained more
than 2 million items each year. The total number of SDI
users is over 3,000, with over 10,000 SDI subject topics.14
In 1980, 11 information centers of ministries set up an
international on-line retrieval terminal in Hong Kong
which connected with DIALOG and ORBIT. Two years
later, two telex terminals connected with DIALOG and
ORBIT were opened in Beijing and a terminal connected
with ESA-IRS was added in Beijing in September 1983.
Sixty-three terminals in 35 cities have been set up.
During recent years, more than 500 databases of foreign
countries have been made available through nine inter
national information retrieval systems.20
Since 1981, six national conferences and two interna
tional ones on computer-based information retrieval
have been held in China. Hundreds of academic papers
and experimental reports were presented to these
conferences.
DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE DATABASES
The development of information systems in China has
special characteristics. Almost all computers and soft
ware are imported from abroad. Terminals for on-line
retrieval are also based on the databases outside of
China. It is clear that there is little possibility to change
such a situation completely in the near future. The key to
the improvement of information systems in China is to
develop Chinese databases.
According to a report given in 1989 by Mr Wang Ting-
jung, head of the China State Information Bureau, 21
foreign bibliographical databases have been built up
from the products of foreign countries. These databases
contain 9,390,000 records. Thirty-seven Chinese biblio
graphy databases either in English or in Chinese have
also been developed and hold a total of 400,000 records.5
In addition to bibliographical databases, full-text
databases and fact databases have been developed in
recent years, such as the macroeconomics general
database, the legal documents full-text database, the
database of scientific product trade information, and
so on.
Although great changes have taken place in database
production in recent years, there are obstacles in the way
of their further development:
(1) Most of them are tested and used on micro
computers, which, of course, are not the appropriate
hardware for middle-sized or large databases.
(2) They are also suffering from the organizational
patterns of current information systems. Some overlaps,
duplications, and omissions among databases exist
because of lack of co-operation among information
systems.
(3) Less attention has been paid to compatibility and
standardization of databases. It must be recognized that
existing systems face very serious difficulties if they are to
be expected to make networks among systems.
(4) There are no accepted criteria for the evaluation of
databases. Much evaluation and analysis have been
undertaken internally by individual services.
(5) Lack of database vendors and commercial market
ing concepts causes producers to put little emphasis on
user requirements and market needs. Databases that
stopped at the experimental stage because they did not
develop a market are not hard to find.
(6) In China, there is no designed unit that takes
responsibility for database services nor any funding
specifically for database production. All databases were
funded by temporary projects, research programs and all
kinds of research experiments. Funding and staffing of
any of the database producers are changeable.
(7) The most surprising fact is the loose connection
between the printed A&I services and machine-readable
databases. On the one hand, printed A&I products did
not become the bibliographical description foundations
of the Chinese machine-readable databases; on the other
hand, few of the Chinese machine-readable databases
have printed A&I versions. Subject access to these
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AN OVERVIEW OF THE ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING SERVICES IN CHINA
databases is still poor both in printed A&I services and
machine-readable databases.
Alternatives for future developments
The first sensitive topic on A&I services development
in China is: What kind of structure or model should we
have?
The USSR, Japan and France have central control
models for their A&I services. In the mid-1950s, the
Japan Information Center of Science and Technology
(JICST) and VINITI had a number of staff, collection
and techniques similar to ISTIC. However, JICST and
VINITI have advanced very fast during the last thirty
years, with established reputations as well-organized
A&I systems.
The USA represents another kind of A&I service
structure. All of the services are produced by individual
companies and have strong commercial aspects.
West Germany stands between these two extremes.
The specialized centers produce A&I products separately
under a co-operative arrangement with a general co
ordinating center, GID.
There is a debate on whether China will use the
Russian model or the West German model.21 It seems
that the present structure of Chinese A&I service produc
tion is more or less similar to that of West Germany so
that there are more possibilities to take the West German
model than others. It was suggested that large combined
information units of particular subject fields be
organized across the existing organizational patterns and
that the State Information Bureau be in charge of co
operative approaches throughout the country. Further
co-operation and arrangement will be carried on within
the units.
Another sensitive topic is whether China needs to
establish a complete set of Chinese A&I services. Again,
there are alternatives available from other countries.
Since 1984, the information center of the French scien
tific research center, CDST, has expanded its PASCAL
database from French information to all of the world,
ignoring existing databases. In West Germany, an inter
national physics database, Physics briefs, developed in
the beginning of 1980s, has a very big overlap with
INSPEC.21 JICST and VINITI supply more examples of
establishing their own complete information databases.
In China, one opinion insists that only those A&I
services which occupy dominant positions in their fields
should be produced and they should be exchanged for
other existing A&I products in the world. With this idea,
there would not be many big changes which could not be
handled. The opposite opinion insists that, as such a big
country and with so much Chinese S&T production each
year as well as with such a special language, China
should have her own complete information system.
Specific areas of interest in recent years have been the
management of information systems and the organiza
tional structure of A&I services. These debates tend to
reach common answers, such as commercialization,
standardization, computerization, application of new
technologies, networking, and international co
operation.
It is clear that all these approaches not only rely on
further research in the theory and technology in this field
but also largely depend on recognition and support from
the government.
References
1. Yan, Qing-jia. Establishment of scientific and technical
secondary information journal system in our country.
Journal of Information Science No. 5, 1986, 34-7.*
2. Rigby, Malcolm. The history of NFAIS 1958-1971. In
Abstracting and indexing services in perspective. M. Lynne
Neufeld et al, ed. Arlington, Va: Information Resources
Press, 1983: 9-19.
3. Xu, Jian-ye. Improving abstracting services. Bulletin of the
China Society of Library Science V. 13, No. 2,1987,57-62.*
4. Chen, Guang-zuo et al. Scientific and technical information
retrieval. Wuhan, China: Wuhan Univ. Press, 1985.*
5. Wang, Ting-jung. Ten years of scientific and technical
information services. Science and Technology Daily. Jan.
19, 1989.*
6. Wu, Zong-shao. On the problem of establishing the system
of bioscience literature retrieval publications in China.
Library and Information Service No. 6, 1984, 8-11.*
7. Zeng, Lei. An introduction to thesauri and classification
systems in the People's Republic of China. International
Classification V. 13, No. 1, 1986, 24-8.
8. Yan, Yi-min. Information system management. Sci. & Tech.
Document Press, 1988.*
9. Yearbook of statistics in China, 1987. Ed. by China Statisti
cal Bureau, Peking: China Statistical Press.*
10. Xu, Ru-jing & Zhou, Shi-hu. The network activities of the
documentation and information system of China Academia
Sinica in the past eight years. Library and Information
Service No. 1, 1989,8-13.*
11. Qi, Yan-li. The development and status of the patents
information retrieval services in our country. Information
Service Research No. 2, 1987, 97-101.*
12. Neufield, M. Lynne. Abstracting and Indexing Services. In
The ALA Yearbook of Library and Information Services
V. 10, 1985. American Library Association. 1985, 25-6.
13. Huang, Guan-cheng. APINMAP and its national center of
China. Library and Information Science No. 1, 1989, 43.*
14. Xu, Ying. Needs of talents in the machinery industry.
Information Science V. 9, No. 4, 1988, 85-91.*
15. Qiu, Kun-de. Scientific and technical information retrieval
services: problems and suggestions. Scientific and Technical
Information Services No. 10, 1985, 11-13.*
16. Lin, Te-hai. Some problems of the documentation
standarization in our country. Beijing Library Bulletin
No. 2, 1988, 25-30.*
106 The Indexer Vol. 17 No. 2 October 1990
AN OVERVIEW OF THE ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING SERVICES IN CHINA
17. Zeng, Min-zu. Construction and development of the
database services in China. Journal of the China Society for
Scientific and Technical Information V. 7, No. 1, 1988, 1-7.*
18. Xiao, Zi-li. The founding of document resources and the
investigation into the layout of social sciences documents.
Bulletin of the China Society of Library Science No. 4, 1988,
42-6.*
19. Chen, Tong-bao. Achievement, problem and the future of
the development of computer-based information retrieval
system in China. Scientific and Technical information
services No. 10, 1986, 8-10.*
20. Chen, Guang-zuo & Wang, Bing. On the computer-based
information retrieval in our country. Science of Science and
Scientific Technology Management No. 11, 1988, 9-21.*
21. Shen, Di-fei. Problems of development strategy for China's
database construction. Journal of the China Society for
Scientific and Technical Information V. 7. No. 3, 1988.
165-70.*
*Texls in Chinese.
The author would like to thank Professor Allen Kent and Linda
Hill for their great help in this research and in the writing of the
paper.
Lei Zeng is currently a PhD student in the School of
Library and Information Science, University of
Pittsburgh, and working at the East Asian library there.
She previously taught courses on indexes and indexing and
on vocabulary control in information retrieval systems at
the School of Library and Information Science, Wuhan
University, Wuhan, China.
Documenting databases
If the present rate of growth continues 5,000 online
databases will be available to the public by 1991, accord
ing to Cuadra/Elsevier, publishers of the Directory of
Online Databases, the guide to publicly available online
databases worldwide, and the new Directory of Portable
Databases.
The numbers of portable databases—databases on
CD-ROM (Compact Disc-Read Only Memory) and
magnetic tape—also continue to grow, at rates even
faster than online databases. Portable databases,
designed for access on users' own computer systems, are
a much more recent phenomenon. They entered the
market in 1985 and, according to Cuadra/Elsevier, will
reach the 1,000 figure by the middle of 1990.
The latest issue of the Directory of Online Databases
lists 4,465 online databases covering all kinds of subject
matter. These databases were developed by 1,948 dif
ferent producers and are offered through a total of 644
online services ("hosts") or gateway services.
Figures taken from the Directory show increases over
the last ten years of from 400 to 4,465 databases; from
221 to 1,948 producers; 59 to 644 online services.
Online and portable databases overlap somewhat in
their subject matter and some databases are available
both online and in portable form. While online databases
are limited by the technology and cost of telecommunica
tions, portable databases can cover more types of
material, such as sound and graphics.
The most common type of online database is full text,
reflecting trend over the past years toward moving
"paper" to electronic forms. These databases include the
full text of newspaper articles, industry newsletters, and
legal case decisions. The next most common type is
bibliographic—citations, sometimes with abstracts—to
scientific, technical, business, and other literature. Other
types of databases are numeric, referral, and mixtures of
primary sources of information. Few online databases
contain graphics or images.
The most common type of portable database is biblio
graphic, then referral databases providing references to
non-print sources of information.
Portable databases containing sounds and images are
represented by a variety of products. The Directory of
Portable Databases lists, in addition to 15 databases
containing collections of sounds or speech, illustrative
"audio" information including digital sound effects and
music effects, pronunciation guides, speech recordings
and melodies of famous composers, as well as over 50
portable databases containing images, including graphic
design aids, photographs, charts, figures, illustrations,
and representations of works of art or maps. Illustrative
"image" databases contain clip art, maps, photographs
and illustrations, and high-resolution color images of
portraits.
Parlez-vous...
Why do French books never have an index? My St
Simon in sixteen volumes and Mme de Sevignc in eight,
the innumerable history books and memoires on my
shelves, whether in contemporary or modern editions,
have not got an index between them. Now mailre
Maurice Garcon, member of the Academie francaise, has
given us the fruits of long and patient historical research,
in nearly 600 pages, without one. Oh! the irritation!
—Nancy Mitford in the Sunday Times, 22 June 1952.
The Indexer Vol. 17 No. 2 October 1990 107
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