College and Research Libraries NANCY G. BOYLAN Identifying Technical Reports Through U.S. Government Research Reports and Its Published Indexes Librarians often have difficulty identifying technical reports because of the variation in government abstracting services, and the variation within these services from year to year. It is difficult to locate informa- tion in one place on separately or privately published indexes to the material contained in such services. Descriptions are given here for U.S. Government Research Reports, its two predecessor titles, and eight separately published indexes to that material, for the period 1946-1964, as well as a chart showing which access to the material is provided in which index for each year. SciENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL REPORT lit- erature forms one of the large fields of current publication. Academic librarians have found their need for these reports increasing year by year since World War II, particularly in institutions conducting research on government contract. These reports have attained importance as a separate medium of communication be- cause of characteristics-such as security classification-which often prevent their being published as conventional journal articles. There often is an obligation on the part of the researcher to report on the contract more promptly than is pos- sible in journals. Contractors often need to know the results of other government- sponsored research promptly.1 While the contents of some reports are later pub- lished in journals, a problem discussed by J. E. Woolston in the Journal of Doc- umentation in 1953, there often is a time 1 D. E . Gray, "Controlling the Technical Report," Bibliography of Technical Reports, XVI (November 1951 ), 141-42. Miss Boylan is Acquisitions Librarian at the University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City. lag of twelve months or more before such publication. 2 The data, furthermore, in such reissues is frequently presented in abbreviated form. These combined fac- tors make it necessary for those interest- ed in such reports to have access to the reports themselves, in their own libraries, in available interlibrary loans or in the Defense Documentation Service. The ability to supply research workers with the reports they need, in a reason- able period of time, requires a working knowledge of the government abstract- ing services designed for them. Even in the library which catalogs its own report collection completely, reports not in the collection must be identified by means of these services. Some of them, such as the Atomic Energy Commission's Nuclear Science Abstracts, have been adequately and consistently indexed from their be- ginnings. An examination of a volume, or referral to a standard reference guide, s~ch as Winchell's Guide to Reference Books, is all that is required to use them. 2 J. E . Woolston, "American Technical Reports ; Their Importance and How to Obtain Them," Journal of Documentation, IX (December 1953 ), 211-19. I 175 I 176 I College & Research Libraries • May> 1967 Others, however, have varied so much over the years that examination of a sin- gle volume is not adequate for a work- ing knowledge of the series. Often the reference guides list the current form of publication with no indication that in- dexes have changed through the years. The U.S. Government Research Re- ports> with its predecessor titles Bibli- ography of Scientific and Industrial Re- ports and Bibliography of Technical Re- ports> has abstracted and announced the availability of a large heterogeneous group of such reports, known as the PB reports, since 1946. The PB reports were originally named for the Publication Board which was established in 1945 to organize the release of American war- time scientific and technical data. By June 30, 1946, several groups having re- sponsibility for these materials were brought together under a new agency, The Office of Technical Services.3 The initials PB, followed by an accession number, had been used as a device for organizing the diverse reports from many sources in order to facilitate their ab- stracting and announcement, and this device has been continued. The history of the U.S. Government Research Re- ports shows many slight changes in pub- lication, in frequency of issue, and in indexing, which, when compounded over the years, make it difficult for the user to .; recall quickly and accurately which stage of development it had attained at the time of a desired report. For the first few years only a subject index was pub- lished by the service, leaving other ap- proaches to the material unpublished. To fill these gaps government agencies, so- cieties, and commercial services have published retrospective indexes. Identi- fication and understanding of these sepa- rate indexes is necessary for effective use of the service. The following bibliographic descrip- 3 U.S. Department of Commerce. Annual Report of the Secretary of Commerce (34th, 1946), pp. xxvi- xxvii. tions, with explanations of arrangement and use, were compiled to bring together information about this service, its prede- 1 cessor titles, and the indexes separately published. They are accompanied by a chart which shows, volume by volume, the means of access to the material, such as by personal author and corporate author, and explains which indexes to ~ use for each. During 1964 the functions of the Of- fice of Technical Services which had published U.S. Government Research Reports were transferred to the National Bureau of Standards and formed a basis for establishment of a new agency, the