Provision of Information to the Research Staff.

The Information Sciences section at Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IITRI) is now operating a Computer Search Center (CSC) for handling numerous machine-readable data bases. The computer programs are generalized in the sense that they will handle any incoming data base. This is accomplished by means of a preprocessor system which checks for errors and omissions on the supplier tape, converts a data base from the supplier's format to the standard IITRI format. In this way, all tapes submitted are in the IITRI format and the search program can operate on them equally regardless of variation in content that exists from supplier to supplier. IITRI is meeting user needs by providing current awareness and retrospective search services from both document-type and data-type machine-readable files. (MF)