Pergamon Information Processing & Management, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 19-32, 1996

Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved

0306-4573/96 $15 + 0.00

0306-4573(95)00047-X

A ROUGH ROAD TO THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY. PROJECT INTREX: A VIEW FROM THE CLR ARCHIVES

COLIN BURKE Department of History, UMBC, 5401 Wilkins Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21228, U.S.A.

Abstract--In the mid-1960s, America's richest library foundation sponsored a far-reaching and very expensive attempt to redefine the library and its technology. The Council on Library Resources, along with other foundations and agencies, supported the near decade-long INTREX Project at MIT. The Council on Library Resources was the only large-scale foundation committed to the general purpose library and it was directed by librarians and others interested in the humanities. But INTREX was not by or for the general library, even the general research library. Rather, the project was shaped and run by engineers and was oriented to the needs of the engineering and applied science communities. Much to the disappointment of the council and its science advisors, INTREX produced little and did not establish the basis for the hoped for fundamental changes in library methods and technology.

In the mid-1960s, America's wealthiest library foundation, the Council on Library Resources, sponsored an ambitious attempt to create an information revolution. Project INTREX, through the use of radically new technologies and concepts, was to lay the foundation for the "research library of the 1970s and beyond." The Council on Library Resources (CLR), along with the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Carnegie Corporation, sponsored the far-reaching program. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was its host and provided its leadership.

INTREX was impressive. It was the largest non-military information research project of its time. In terms of 1990's dollars, it cost more than $20,000,000 (U.S. Department of Labor, 1993). Its leaders predicted that at least a working prototype of the library for the next century, one for all types of users, including humanists, would "be in place by the decade beginning in 1970" (Hating & Boberge, 1969).

Even today, INTREX is remembered as one of the most important of all information experiments. But the historical record indicates that Project INTREX was for engineers, not for all types of library users. And it did not achieve what was promised for engineering research (Stevens, 1993; CLR5, c. 1993).

THE CLR AND THE NEW RESEARCH LIBRARY

In 1956, the Ford Foundation decided to give some of its millions to the cause of the academic research library. It created and generously funded The Council on Library Resources. Those chosen to set the direction for the council, including its first president, Vetoer W. Clapp, were primarily librarians and university educators with a humanities background. They were not applied scientists nor were they documentalists or "special librarians" (CLR3, 1956; Clapp, 1971; CLR7, Dec. 1958; CLR3, Sept. 1993; Stuart-Stubbs, 1992).

The CLR began a series of moderately sized research and technical projects it hoped would benefit all types of libraries (CLR3, March 1958; King et al., 1963). But Clapp did not isolate the council from the applied scientists and documentalists who were becoming important to automated scientific information retrieval, although he worded about their growing influence in the library word (Daedalus, 1966; Clapp, 1965; Ridenour et al., 1951; Clapp, 1964).

The council made some early investments in advanced technology (CLR5, c. 1993). Then, it

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20 Colin Burke

became involved in a large-scale attempt at the AVCO Corporation to create a micro-form machine for information retrieval and televised presentation (Avco Corp., 1960, 1961). That project made significant technical advances, but its hardware proved too expensive to be put to use in libraries. That led Vemer Clapp away from grandiose technological solutions and back to projects that had a greater likelihood of serving the needs of the typical library (Alexander & Rose, 1964).

1960, THE COUNCIL AND THE SCIENTIFIC CRUSADE

Then, the Ford Foundation asked the council to change direction and focus on library technofuturism. The foundation's leaders wanted to help America win the cold war's technology contest. As a result, in 1960, they "offered" the council a large grant if it would focus on reforming the library through a major and long-term research program. The mandate was specific. The CLR was to create a "laboratory or center involving the activities of specialized scientific personnel." It was made clear to the council that the foundation was now more interested in "information" than in the problems of the traditional research library. The project description did not even include the word "library" (Clapp, 1971). The council's managers immediately tried to establish a laboratory. But Clapp and his colleagues discovered that it was very difficult to define what such a laboratory should be or do.

The CLR's managers followed procedural hints from the foundation. They contacted men at the top of the new science hierarchy in America. Among the first to be asked for advice were William. O. Baker of Bell Laboratories and Richard Bolt of Boston's engineering think-tank, Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), and the National Science Foundation. They suggested using the Carnegie Institution or Gilbert King's Itek corporation. Then, Bolt had one of his colleagues approach the council (Clapp, 1965). That man, Joseph C. R. Licklider, would have a great, though indirect, impact on INTREX.

Joseph Licklider, a psycho-acoustics expert at Harvard, then MIT, was also a vice president at BBN. While at BBN Licklider became committed to developing the potentials of interactive computing. That led to his publication, in 1960, of one of the founding statements of computer science, "Man-Computer Symbiosis" (Noble, 1991, pp. 110-135). The essay gave Licklider an international reputation in fields beyond computer science. By the early 1960s he was one of the most influential managers in cold war applied science.

When Richard Bolt urged him to contact the Council on Library Resources about its "laboratory," Licklider immediately presented a plan to the CLR. The council quickly granted him a 2-year $250,000 contract for experiments at BBN beginning in November 1961 (BBN, 1963). Licklider put together an impressive team, one which included many experts from MIT's computer projects (Wildes & Lindgren, 1985; Project MAC, 1992). They conducted some experiments, exploring many of the topics they had worked on before the contract began, especially the BBN interactive time-share computer system. That work resulted in thorough and detailed technical papers (BBN, 1963). But the major BBN report was a bit of a surprise to the CLR. It began with: (BBN, 1963, p. 1)

The "libraries" of the phrase, "libraries of the future," may not be very much like present-day libraries and the term "library," rooted in "book," is not truly appropriate to the kind of system upon which the study focused. We delimited the scope of the study, almost at the outset, to functions, classes of information, and domains of knowledge in which the items of basic interest are not the print or paper, and not the words and sentences, themselves--but the facts, concepts, principles, and ideas that lie behind the visible and tangible aspects of documents.

Within a few pages it was declared that what was needed was not a library but a "procognitive" system. The way to such a "real" information system, they said, had to be revolutionary because, "extrapolation of the main courses of present-day library science and information technology does not lead to the concepts or systems that either seem very desirable or very effective" (BBN, 1963, p. 3). Such ideas became known to the public when, 2 years after the BBN project ended, Licklider published his version of the report, The Library of the Future (Licklider, 1965).

The council did not renew the first BBN contract nor did it ask the consulting firm to establish

Project INTREX 21

the foundation's "laboratory." In fact, it was more than four years before the Ford Foundation's mandate was turned into a project.

1964, MIT AND THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION

While the CLR seemed to pause, another institution moved rapidly. The close friend and neighbor of BBN, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which had hosted "library" reform programs in the 1930s and 1940s, decided to make another attempt to become a leading force in the library and information worlds. Although closely tied to the military's cold war projects, MIT did not wait for government help to begin its mid-1960s information initiative. Soon after the government supported computer time-share Project MAC began at MIT, the school announced it was launching another of its efforts to revolutionize the library. Without having a formal name, any significant funding, or a well defined program in hand, in early 1964, MIT's President, Julius A. Stratton, let it be known that the Institute had founded a "long-range program for the application of the principles and processes of information processing to library operation." Its leader, Stratton announced, was to be Carl Overhage (CLR7, 16 January, 1964). Overhage was one of MIT's cold war engineering luminaries. He was a Professor of Engineering and Lincoln Laboratory's director. He was also a member of many Department of Defense science boards and an advisor to a wide range of civilian agencies (CLR7, 1964-1965).

As soon as he was appointed to head the new MIT information project, Overhage made the rounds of government agencies and private foundations searching for vitally needed funds. Despite its defense work, MIT had few dollars for its own ambitions, even for the planned refurbishing of its engineering library (CLR4, 1964-1965). Overhage began with many handicaps. He did not have a staff, space at MIT, nor a definite agenda. His initiative did not even have a fixed name.

Overhage's goals, however, were financially ambitious. His mid-1960s proposals to the Ford Foundation and other funding agencies reflected his expectation of a repeat of Big Science opportunities, such as the development of the SAGE system (CLR6, 6 November 1964; CLR 1, 27 October, 1964). He asked the agencies for more than $6,000,000 for four years of "experiments" (CLR1, 12 October, 1964). Everything was to be first class. Overhage thought his "new" librarians deserved that. The best type of person would be attracted to the library reform cause, he stated, "only if the incentives are somewhat comparable to what awaits him if he does creative work in his own field" (Daedalus, 1966).

Although Overhage had been in contact with the largest private and govemment agencies about funding in 1964, he received only relatively small seed grants from the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation and a larger one from Philadelphia's Independence Foundation for a planning conference on what was now regarded as a program of information transfer experiments (CLR1, March 20, 1968). Using the Independence grant, Overhage began to organize one of the most impressive conclaves in the history of library science.

1965, WOODS HOLE CONFERENCE

The Woods Hole Conference of summer 1965 saw a core group from MIT encamped for 5 weeks. They were joined by important visitors. The meeting was well organized, encouraged creative thinking, and led to the publication of the classic, INTREX: Report of a Planning Conference on Information Transfer Experiments (Overhage & Harmon, 1965: Overhage & Reintjes, 1974). The publicized aim of the conference was to spell-out the nature of the advanced system that MIT was to provide to the libary world. The not-too-hidden agenda was to help INTREX gain funding. There were thirty-five major participants or "regulars" and some forty "visitors" who made contributions to both causes. MIT's engineering and computer science departments sent the largest contingent of regulars. Among the other regulars was only

IPR 32-I-C

22 Colin Burke

one person who seemed to represent traditional libraries and librarianship. But even Steven A. McCarthy was from one of the science oriented libraries at Cornell University.

The INTREX staff took the responsibility for summing-up the conference in a final report. Although the meeting explored a wide range of libary topics, that report focused on a few items, ones that brought INTREX's goals closer to what the CLR seemed to want. Significantly, those goals were declared to be relevant to more than a library for scientists (Overhage & Harmon, 1965).

The report emphasized that INTREX's contribution would be unique. All parts of INTREX would be based upon serving "the real needs of real users in the university community." INTREX was to have a "living laboratory." A model library (laboratory) was to be established at MIT. Central to that laboratory was to be MIT's advanced CTSS time-share computer system. INTREX would refine it, then use it to solve the current "procedural" problems of libraries.

More important to INTREX than library procedures were user services. A far-reaching and advanced "experiment" was to be the Augmented Catalog, an on-line system. It was to cover all forms of recorded information, not just books. Once it was developed, INTREX could proceed to explore a range of fundamental libary problems. For example, the Augmented Catalog would provide a basis for testing what indexing items would be best for user-directed interactive bibliographic searching. Equally innovative were the proposed Text Access experiments. Every technology was to be explored to find the ways to the fastest and most psychologically pleasing access to full-text. More adventurous experiments were to liberate information that was locked- up in books. These "fact retrieval" experiments shared many ideas with later hypertext systems. Other proposed INTREX experiments were to support and supplement the major ones. Interactive computer languages and display consoles were to receive continuing attention. Computer-aided, on-line instruction, and a version of what we now call "e-mail", were to be developed.

Last, but perhaps the most important, said the Woods Hole report, was theory: "A major intellectual challenge for Project INTREX is the development of a unifying theory that will lead to coherent design and interpretation of experiments in information transfer systems" (Overhage & Harmon, 1965, p. xviii; CLR1, 19 September 1965).

The scope of the proposed INTREX experiments was enormous. But the descriptions of them were always hedged with qualifications and this made the report ambiguous. The most significant ambiguity in the 1965 document was the treatment of the term, "experiments." J. C. R. Licklider had been asked to explain it. In response, he wrote Appendix L of the Woods Hole volume, "The Nature of the Experiments to Be Carried Out By Project INTREX" (Overhage & Harmon, 1965, p. 215). Licklider compared the well defined, tightly controlled, theory driven, and quantified experimentation he had encountered as a psychological researcher with what an "information transfer" experiment had to be. He quoted the great Fred Mosteller: "These experiments will be so important that experimental control will be unnecessary."

Not all of the Woods Hole participants accepted Licklider's approach. While avoiding a direct confrontation with Licklider, Merrill M. Flood demonstrated that "experiments," as more generally understood, could be specified and linked to the body of accumulated scientific knowledge. He cited the existing methods and software that could test the efficiency of indexing schemes and keyword sets. But Flood seemed to have been a unique voice at Woods Hole and the conference ended as a triumph for Overhage.

Just after the summer 1965 conference a National Science Foundation-Advanced Research Project Agency combination and the Carnegie Corporation approved Overhage's proposals. Carnegie promised $250,000 and the govemment agencies agreed to give $700,000 for 2 years of work. As almost an afterthought the American Newspaper Publisher's Association gave $50,000 (Lage & Marcus, 1968; Janda & Gordon, 1970).

FALL 1965, GETFING STARTED

Carl Overhage began to put INTREX into operation. He expanded his staff and finally secured a home for INTREX within MIT. Then came a series of critically important decisions. Some

Project INTREX 23

were the result of a quite conscious process, but it was the ones that were in the nature of assumptions that proved most influential. As a consequence of them INTREX became more of an engineering project than a set of experiments.

Reflecting the technological orientation of the project, the first home for INTREX was the Institute's Electronics Systems Laboratory (ESL) (CLR1, 15 March, 1968). The project's permanent home was to be the Institute's Barker Engineering library. That was of critical importance to INTREX because, as Overhage pointed out, "it was an essential feature of the proposed experiments that they must involve the participation of library users of all categories in normal working situations." Unfortunately, the libary had no room for INTREX in 1965 and it was about to undergo a complete renovation (CLR1, 27 October, 1964). It was thought that it would be at least 2 or 3 years before the engineering library could house INTREX.

The man Overhage selected to be the operational head of INTREX, J. Francis Reintjes, was not a librarian but an electronics engineer. Along with a cadre of devoted graduate students he had been developing computer-controls for machine tools at the ESL for almost a decade. He was currently directing an on-going vigorous project on interactive workstations for MIT's Computer Aided Design (CAD) initiative (Reintjes, 1991, pp. 109-119).

In late 1965, Reintjes set his young engineers to developing INTREX hardware and software. It was assumed that INTREX would need to have advanced electronic terminals (CRTs) and other full-text technology before it could begin any experiments. Overhage had charged Reintjes with more than finding technological solutions, however. Reintjes had a broader responsibility: to design entire systems for two of the most critical of the many experiments mentioned in the Woods Hole report. Reintjes was to supervise all of the Augmented Catalog and Full-Text Access work.

A delay was built into INTREX in 1965 when the project's data base was defined. INTREX would gather, index, and abstract its own, a time consuming and expensive task. The option of using a data base already in place, such as that compiled by MIT's M. M. Kessler for his air force and NSF sponsored computerized scientific TIP information retrieval project, was rejected. Late 1965 saw another fundamental decision. All of INTREX's data-handlers, indexers, and abstractors were to come from the school's student body or its Barker engineering library. Overhage would not seek out other librarians from within MIT nor would he hire outside experts in computer indexing, abstracting, or user psychology. No social science or humanities librarians were brought to the project. (CLR6, March, 1966).

1966-1967, SEARCHING FOR PERMANENT FUNDING

Just as Overhage made the basic commitments, INTREX began to run out of money. Overhage worried that the project would have to be suspended for a few months while MIT awaited the arrival of the $700,000 from the government grant. Equally threatening to INTREX's future was the fact that nothing of substance had yet come from the project. That made it very difficult for Overhage as he began a new series of pleas to the foundations (CLR6, 1966).

Overhage applied to the CLR in early 1966 for both emergency financial help and for $6,800,000 for four additional years of INTREX. Despite the Ford Foundation's 6 year-old demand for a "laboratory," the council's response was not what Overhage expected (CLR4, 28 November, 1966). It informed Overhage that it would grant INTREX $15,000 to carry it through the summer and that it might be willing to give as much as $250,000 for future work. But he would have to submit a new proposal that contained specific plans and he would have to wait while it was reviewed by a special expert panel (CLR1, 12 December, 1966).

In fall 1966, a CLR panel was convened and Overhage made a presentation. He tried to gain approval of his $6,800,000 request. It was rejected. Overhage was disappointed and angry. His worries intensified as many other information "experiments" began to emerge around the country (Henderson, 1973; Kilgour, 1970).

There were some very heated letters from MIT to the council about its failure to support a great program in information science. Overhage almost accused the CLR of trying to ruin the

24 Colin Burke

project (CLR4, 28 November 1966). The council responded that it was going to award INTREX the $250,000 it had mentioned previously and the funds would be available in early 1967. But it refused to provide any additional money immediately. Overhage was informed the council would consider his newest request for $2,000,000 to cover a segment of his long-term work. Overhage had little alternative but to begin to rewrite his proposal and to plan to submit it to the council before the end of 1967 (CLRS, 1968; CLR1, June-November, 1966).

Overhage felt under pressure. INTREX was more than 2 years old and had used up a great deal of money. But no experiments had taken place, no hardware was ready, and the MIT library was just beginning to undergo its thorough renovation--without the monies the Institute had said it needed from the CLR to make it at least the physical "library of the future." There was still no grand theory of information, something that had been declared essential at the Woods Hole meeting.

Overhage called on J. C. R. Licklider for advice. Licklider made many visits and then decided to give half of his time to INTREX during the first part of 1967. Overhage also sought more endorsements and brought in major figures in the information field to lecture at the Institute (CLR7,1 February, 1967). Fortunately, MIT's engineers provided some hope. They had decided on the specifics of the user-stations for the interactive parts of INTREX. A combined CRT was to be developed and it would handle both digital and analog information.

The engineers also made some decisions about the data base. The catalog information would be digitized, but not the full-text. The catalog was to be stored in high-speed computer memories, perhaps on disks. When a user performed a bibliographic search, the computer would generate the results. But it was too expensive to transform and store the text images on a computer. A micro-form and television device, perhaps like the one used in the AVCO machine previously sponsored by the CLR, would select and transmit the text over a coaxial cable to the combined terminal as an analog image. But machines were far from ready despite borrowing from the technology and software of the CAD and time-share projects at MIT (CLR6, 15 April, 1968).

Reintjes' engineering goals were very ambitious in the context of the technology of the mid- 1960's. He had very great problems to overcome, even for the digital catalog information. All of MIT's 1960s CRT displays remained difficult to read. And they were very expensive. The CAD group 'at the ESL had realized they would have to lower CRT costs and had been lookng for a less expensive alternative for "graphical" (CRT) displays for some time. By early 1967, they thought they had the answer. An electronics instrument company, Tektronix, had a new oscilloscope tube that could hold an image for a significant amount of time without computer refreshing. Its limitation, that the image could not be locally edited, seemed a minor inconvenience. Soon there was a crude prototype of a CRT for digital data at the Institute. By 1968 its creators had founded their own CRT company, ARDS (Reintjes, 1991, p. 127).

The ARDS terminal appeared to be a solution to the problem of displaying the INTREX catalog information, but there was still a great deal of frustration caused by the stubbornness of full-text micro-form technology. How could one or even a few micro-form selection machines be made to provide unique images to the screens of many users? Television systems were intended to provide the same image to many viewers, not to send different ones to different screens. How could INTREX serve a typical library if only one image could be displayed at a time?

It was certain that INTREX would remain without its essential hardware throughout 1967 and 1968. There were also signs that the special data base of engineering articles financed by the Carnegie Foundation, then NSF-ARPA funds, would not be ready for several years. The initial fifty entries were made in the early months of 1967 but progress was slow (CLR1, September 1968). However, in 1967, INTREX's data group was quite optimistic (Benenfeld, 1968). They were especially proud of the "expanded" nature of the catalog's records. At one point each contained some fifty different "fields." It was thought that the many index fields would allow professional indexers to match the needs of specialized users. The indexing terms were themselves "expanded." They were "combinations of phrases" within the documents. INTREX was not just pulling out keywords but terms that "provided sufficient contextual expression such that the term may stand by itself." There was no limit to the number of such entries and no list

Project INTREX 25

of approved terms because INTREX wished to avoid imposing any of the artificial constraints that had led to so many complaints by scientists about indexing. Section headings, picture captions, and the like were included to ensure a convergence between the indexers' ideas of significance and those of users (Benenfeld, 1968, p. 39).

The INTREX catalog reflected the project's attempt to incorporate the leading ideas then current for advanced information retrieval. The initial plans called for the inclusion in the index of all the citations in an article. That would allow what Eugene Garfield had so vigorously advocated, information recovery through citation linkages. There was to be much more in each catalog record: so much that the average record would be required to hold over 400 six-character words (Benenfeld, 1968, p. 43). There was no sign that INTREX's catalogers feared that semantic chaos would develop because of such complex index records. The INTREX staff had a great deal of faith that "artificial intelligence" in its yet-to-be developed software would solve any matching problems. They were also confident in the technical aspects of the data base. By mid-1967, INTREX's file organization was being determined. It was claimed that an inverted "term" file would be employed and that the best of the new techniques in data base management systems would be implemented.

LATE 1967, BACK TO THE COUNCIL AND THE NSF

Such news encouraged Overhage. That was reflected in the revised proposal he presented to the CLR in November 1967. He suggested that INTREX had already accomplished enough to justify the $2,000,000 he was now requesting. He also looked forward to a renewal of the NSF funding. Overhage knew that the CLR would carefully examine the proposal, especially because its leadership had changed. Vetoer Clapp had been succeeded by another leader from America's most important academic circles, Fred C. Cole. Cole had taken over the council in September 1967. Although he had been at the Ford Foundation and was sensitive to the special needs of scientific information systems, he wanted INTREX to justify itself. Despite Overhage's optimism, that was becoming harder to do. Competition to INTREX was emerging and was undermining the need for a special "laboratory" (Summit, 1967). "Networks for knowledge" were becoming national priorities and there were moves to gain direct federal financing for a permanent library research center (Cuadra, 1969; Austin, 1968; Bemstein, 1969; Knight & Nourse, 1969).

Fred C. Cole had assembled a very skilled and prestigious panel to review the late 1967 INTREX proposal. Most were applied scientists or documentalists, but even those members from more traditional library backgrounds had experience in information systems for science (CLR2, 1968; CLR8, 1968). The panel members had much to consider when they began their review in January 1968. They had to evaluate INTREX's past, as well as the new proposal (CLR1, 29 February, 1968). Their evaluations were not all positive and as the reviewers' comments flowed in doubts about INTREX emerged. There were so many criticisms that it is difficult to explain why the relationship between the CLR and INTREX did not end in spring 1968. What is clear is that the early 1968 evaluations were on target.

Initial concerns were expressed in a letter the CLR's staff sent to Carl Overhage in February (CLR6, 2 February, 1968). It contained a long list of penetrating questions and asked for responses before the review committee left for a site visit at MIT later in the month. Especially important to the review panel was the question of how much a finished INTREX system would cost. Once in operation, would it be too expensive, even for MIT? Could such a system ever compete with those already in place?

There were questions about INTREX's use of its funds. Why had it cost $300,000 for the CRT hardware development that had begun some years before? Responding to a detailed description of the proposed full-text display system, the CLR asked why it would require more than $200,000 in labor costs to polish the proposed micro-form retrieval machine (a commercial product) and its transmisison system (CLR1, 31 May, 1968)? Very important to the panel, was it really going to cost the council $18,000 a year for the storage of the INTREX article indexes on MIT's computer disks?

26 Colin Burke

Overhage responded immediately, but his answers were vague. He could not, he said, give detailed work plans nor cost per-activity breakdowns. He stated that INTREX's administrators would work full-time (if additional funds could be obtained) but he skated around the question of INTREX's integration with other "information" projects, requesting that personal contacts with other investigators be treated as sufficient (CLR1, 2 February, 1968). And ambiguous responses were given to the questions concerning future economic support for INTREX, its cost once operational, and the utilization of outside research on library users' needs and procedures. The responses concerning software documentation were also less than direct.

Such answers did not satisfy the reviewers. Harvard's Harvey Brooks let it be known that he was deeply worried that the INTREX managers were too accustomed to gold-plated government projects to be able to run an efficient operation (CLR6, 21 February, 1968). The insightful Brooks hit on another point in a long letter to Carl Spaulding, the council's systems-specialist (CLR6, 21 February, 1968):

The whole approach seems excessively hardware minded. Again, I would be less nervous about this if there were not so many unhappy precedents. The many people involved in air defense clearly underestimated the software problems, and the Sage systems never really became an operating system because of this. Did they really learn their lessons, or are we about to repeat the same type of error in another field of computer application? The same thing appears to have happened in some of M.I.T.'s education and curriculum projects.

The CLR's visit to the Institute in March helped Overhage's cause to a degree, but serious doubts remained. Carl Spaulding feared that INTREX was drifting from its true purpose. He informed Cole that because of the project's focus on hardware. "It appears that it would be easy for the $2 million to disappear forever with nothing significant to show for it" (CLR6, March, 1968). Spaulding was very upset over other matters. While at the Institute, he had conversations with the head of the MIT libraries, William N. Locke. CLR's leaders thought that Overhage had promised that INTREX would work in close harmony with Locke and all the MIT librarians (CLR7, 16 January, 1964). Spaulding did not sense that was happening. He expressed his concerns that INTREX was, at very best, dictating to others on campus--rather than cooperating with them.

Spaulding had also spent much time with M. M. Kessler. Kessler was running the NSF- funded TIP computerized information project at the Institute (Kessler, 1960, 1964, 1965). TIP already had an interactive bibliographic system that was connected to some two hundred hardcopy terminals on the campus. Kessler had indexed the contents of more than twenty-five recent physics joumals for the project. The council had more than once stated that it wished INTREX to cooperate with and perhaps be integrated with Kessler's work (CLR6, March, 1968). But Spaulding had to report that neither Locke nor Kessler was happy with INTREX. They had little faith in it and both indicated that despite many of Overhage's statements they were not planning to join the INTREX project. Kessler's dissatisfaction with INTREX was especially intense (CLR5, 4 March, 1968).

The council's review board voiced additional concerns about INTREX after the early 1968 site visit. Robert Vosper, for example, wanted to know why INTREX had not hired a psychologist or sociologist to direct the experiments on user behavior. His rather direct criticism was later fended off by Carl Overhage when he referred to Licklider's connection to the project and suggested that, "Behavioral scientists, however, do not always know how natural scientists operate" (CLR1, 25 March, 1968). Renewed concerns about INTREX not using the logical and technological developments coming from other information projects was treated to a brusque response. Reintjes and Overhage stated that other indexing efforts were not suited to the needs of truly interactive systems and all existing hardware was inadequate for the type of experiments INTREX would conduct (CLR1, 25 March, 1968).

Such responses did not satisfy the panel, nor the CLR's leaders. The future of INTREX was uncertain in March 1968. However, during that spring, INTREX's staff prepared a series of special reports that summed up their work under the earlier grants. These reports were all quite positive. Together with communications between Overhage and the CLR, the reports helped to counter the negative impressions that had built up since January. Reintjes' assistants gave an optimistic picture of the future of their micro-image (fiche) transmission system. They promised

Project INTREX 27

that a relatively simple system would be able to simultaneously serve many full-text users (Knudsen et al., 1968; CLR1, 2 September, 1969).

INTREX's regular semi-annual reports addressed other technological issues. Unfortunately, they revealed some weaknesses in the project. A positive spin could not hide an unexpected but serious problem. It was discovered that if the number of INTREX's catalog records went too far beyond the size of the trial data base, current computer disk memories would be unable to hold the index. In response, much attention was given to the design of a special magnetic tape memory system (CLRI, 15 March, 1968).

Such technical problems had not slowed the growth of the data base. The 1968 reports stated that the pace of indexing had doubled and by early summer some 6500 of a projected 10,000 articles would be indexed. The indexing process, it was reported, had become more sophisticated. A system for assigning "relevancy" weights for each index term was under development (Benenfeld, 1968, p. 47). Other semi-annual reports underlined programming achievements. It was admitted, however, that many programs, including utility packages, had been borrowed from project TIP and the older ESL work.

The CLR was informed that the first steps had been taken to develop sophisticated query software--programs so smart they would select items on the basis of "near" matches between a request and index contents or on the basis of the frequency of appearance of the search terms in the articles. To show that INTREX would provide the profession with important findings on the processes and cost of indexing, additional special reports were published. There was great pride in the conclusion of one of them. An undergraduate student, Richard C. Lufkin, had found that professional librarians took longer to learn how to index efficiently than the students who, it was stated, were doing most of the work (Lufkin, 1968).

INTREX's leaders had to admit that some mistakes had been made. The data base had a serious weakness. The librarians who had selected the "material science" articles to be indexed had chosen a majority of items that were not of interest to users. But such defeats were treated as unimportant. The reports were always enthusiastic about the future of INTREX and full-text, on-line libraries (CLR1, 15 September, 1968).

To the INTREX staff, the most important achievement was reaching the final step in the designs of the INTREX workstation and retrieval systems (Haring & Boberge, 1969). If users could be restricted to making no more than four requests a minute, a time-division system could be developed for the micro-form selector. As a user set the identification number for his desired article, the selector's mechanisms would find the correct micro-plate and image and place the page of an article before the attached television camera. One quick shot would be all that would be needed for the request. With the image fixed on the workstation's screen, the selector could, in seconds, satisfy the requests of many other users before having to re-send the initial image.

SPRING 1968, INTREX IS SAVED

It was the self-assured attitudes of the INTREX staff and the need to give the Ford Foundation a laboratory that saved the day (CLR1, 15 September, 1968). At the end of a tense March 1968 meeting between the CLR's review panel and Overhage, it was recommended that two of the INTREX projects, the Augmented Catalog and the Text Access experiment be supported. The more ambitious Fact Retrieval and Networking (among national data centers) systems were seen as too much for what was now planned to be a two-year project (CLR6, 15 April, 1968).

But the recommendation was neither unconditional nor final. The panel wanted a new and more detailed proposal. It desired that INTREX devote little additional time to hardware development. Experiments, through simulation, if needed, should begin as soon as possible (CLR1, 25 March, 1968). The panel's recommendation did not lead to an unqualified acceptance of INTREX by the CLR's administration. As the council awaited a revised proposal, expecting that it would be for one-half of what Overhage had requested, Carl Spaulding continued to worry about what he interpreted as the underlying attitudes of the INTREX staff. Of special importance was their relationship to the libary profession. He feared that INTREX would have a one way relationship with librarians. The response he received when he asked about the

28 Colin Burke

proposed ties between the Library of Congress' projects and INTREX led him to say, "all in all, I get the feeling that this is also more of a one way channel from INTREX to the world than an explanation of how INTREX will leam from what others are doing" (CLR6, 3 May, 1968; CLR6, c. May 1968). There was also a great deal of concern in 1968 over Overhage's original budget item for more than $600,000 for the renovation of the MIT library (CLR4, 28 November, 1966).

Despite his concerns, even Carl Spaulding came to support the 1968 INTREX request. Then, he and others on the CLR staff approved of something that shaped the remainder of INTREX: they gave a green light to INTREX to spend more of its time on hardware development than on the "experiments," despite the panel's earlier recommendation that technological work be restricted. Although the review committee had recommended the use of simulation to speed the beginning of tests of user reactions (the supposed heart of INTREX's experimental program), the CLR concluded, "it appears that simulation would have limited usefulness in this program. Hence it is not recommended" (CLR8, 1968).

On 14 June, 1968 the council informed Overhage that he was to receive $1,150,000 for 2 years of work and more than $100,000 of that was to be sent to the Institute immediately so the project could continue through the summer. The CLR directed that its funds were to be used only for the Augmented Catalog, Full-Text access, and the "model automated engineering library." The model library was to be the great "laboratory" but received only $150,000. The catalog and text access were each given $500,000 (CLR6, 24 March, 1971). Cole then notified the Ford Foundation that the "laboratory" it had wanted since 1960 was about to be established (CLR5, 13 June, 1968). Overhage also received long awaited good news. The once reluctant NSF renewed its investment in INTREX.

By early 1969, INTREX had what it needed to become operational. The pace of cataloging increased, hardware for the workstations was progressing, and there were thoughts on how, finally, to conduct experiments. Another series of reports flowed to the CLR and the NSF informing them of the progress at Cambridge. But observers continued to have fundamental methodological questions (CLR6, 2 September, 1969).

Charles P. Bourne, for example, wrote a criticism-filled letter to Charles Spaulding. In this letter he protested that INTREX and several other projects were basing cost estimates on inadequate samples. He was especially critical of INTREX which, he wrote, had offered processing cost estimates based upon sixty cases each for on-line and tape based data entry costs. Bourne pointed out that many estimates based upon 3000 to 300,000 cases were available to researchers--all of whom should have taken such findings into account (CLR6, 9 October, 1969).

The CLR received more criticisms of INTREX from its advisors. By 1970, the council could not ignore the complaints. Carl Spaulding came to fear that INTREX had spent a great deal of indexing money for nothing. He had been informed that an INTREX semi-annual report disclosed that searchers were using only a very small, and very conventional, set of access points in the bibliographic files. Had all the foundation and government funds been spent to find out that searchers relied on the author and title entries (CLR6, 10 June, 1970)?

Something much more troublesome emerged. By 1970, MIT was clearly indicating that it would not support the 7094 computer INTREX depended upon. The year or more it might take to rewrite the software for the new MIT computer would mean the death of the project (CLR6, 3 March, 1970).

PLANNING FOR 1971 AND 1972

Neither the criticisms nor the computer situation discouraged Carl Overhage. He returned to the council in early 1970 with a request for $900,000 for 1971-1972 (CLR6, 5 May, 1970). He now stated that closely controlled experiments would become a hallmark of INTREX. There were, he said, more than enough students at MIT and Harvard to allow "real" experiments to begin. He planned to finish some fifty to seventy-five "experiments" in the next 24 months (an average of perhaps three per month).

Project INTREX 29

He followed up with optimistic reports. He wrote that in the 4 months since the first user- station had been put into operation within the Engineering Library (for 3 hours a day) some three hundred "individual uses" of it had been made. There were some qualifications, however. The station was not the advanced model that had been promised and the approximately one user per- hour rate, Overhage admitted, was due to casual and curious users. Only twenty-three users had been serious ones whose sessions might have been relevant to the experimental phase of the project. Those qualifications hurt his cause. There were demands for another full review. INTREX's leaders were called to a March 1970 board meeting (CLR1, 17 March, 1970). Fred C. Cole opened it in a rather ominous way. CLR's basic responsibility, he said, is in helping libraries, and the question that must always be asked is: "Is this the most appropriate way to do SO?"

The INTREX administrators were asked to report on the use of the CLR's millions. Reintjes' gave the presentation. His review was dynamic, but what he reported was not satisfactory. Although he stated that INTREX had already shown that its system generated better bibliographies than those provided by commercial vendors, he had to qualify this claim by admitting that more "samples" were needed "before these result can be considered more than tentative." He did even less well in his attempt to impress the board when he admitted that only five people had participated in any of the "studies" of what fields should be included in the bibliographic records. He also admitted that INTREX had still not designed good experiments to test the interaction between users and the system. On top of all that, he had to reveal that the promised combined catalog and full-text console was not yet in operation and that the entire campus had only four INTREX stations of any type (CLR1 15 March, 1970). He did not mention it, but the system to allow multiple access to the micro-text was not yet in place. Only one full-text user could be served at a time although the system was now planned to be able to handle sixty-four users simultaneously.

One experimental result was emerging that was a great surprise to the CLR. It appeared that full-text would only be used by searchers to check the relevance of selected bibliographic i tems--text access, as discussed at Woods Hole, was not desired by users (Caruso, 1974, p. 498)!

In its 1970 and 1971 formal evaluations of the work at MIT the CLR little could single out litte for praise, except for an anomaly, a non-automated INTREX contribution. The INTREX librarians had devised paper "pathfinders." They were being handed out to students as aids in locating research materials in the MIT Library. The Pathfinders made no call upon computers (CLR1, 1971). The board's 1970 report warned of the dangers of MIT abandoning the 7094 and more: all the costs of the major components of the INTREX system were rising, not declining, as might be expected as a program matured. Just as the report was issued, something more threatening occurred. The NSF signalled that it might not renew its INTREX grant. This might leave INTREX without the funds it required to finish its work even if the CLR continued its support.

1970, ANOTHER REPRIEVE

In the summer of 1970, following an NSF decision to renew its grant to INTREX (CLR1, 30 May, 1972), the CLR also decided to extend its support despite its negative evaluation of progress to date. It indicated, however, that it would give less than half of what had been requested. It also declared that it would support one, not two years of work. For the $400,000 Overhage was to receive he was asked to clarify the goals of the project and to channel energies towards them. In response, Overhage stated he would intensify the use of the "Model Library," partly by turning to standard typewriter terminals to increase the number of INTREX workstations. [By 1972, six teletype-like terminals were used to augment the two combined and two special CRT terminals (Caruso, 1974, p. 486).]

But INTREX did not progress as far as expected in 1970 and 1971. This lack of achievement is reflected in Overhage's reports to the council. When asked about the progress of experiments he suggested that there was no more need to see if terminals were psychologically acceptable

30 Colin Burke

to users. But when asked about the selection of fields to be used in the catalog, he responded that analysis of the work of the ten or eleven people who had so far done significant searching yielded data with too great a statistical spread to allow a final judgment. And, all in all, he stated, INTREX was collecting so much data, and of a kind that had not been analyzed before, that it would be some time before a thorough report could be made (CLR6, August-September, 1970; Marcus et al., 1978). Then, came a damaging admission. Overhage hinted that the work at MIT might not be transferable to the traditional humanities library (CLR6, 6 November, 1970).

There was yet another surge of dissatisfaction among the CLR's advisors. Their frustrations over the project's inability to bring the promised display and retrieval systems to true maturity reached a near explosive level by December 1970 (CLR6, 15 December, 1970). However, Overhage reported that "experiments" were underway. Twelve students in an MIT graduate course were using both INTREX and other bibliographic sources to gather information on fracture mechanics. He also cited a soon-to-be initiated study on the economics of INTREX and similar systems. It would investigate, among other things, whether or not bibliographic searching would decline with increased user fees (Caruso, 1974, p. 495).

But such projects could not compensate for other misgivings. The expensive nature of INTREX and the cost of the systems it might spawn became critical issues by 1971. INTREX's development costs had been very high. Over the some 6 years of its active life, INTREX spent, on the average, the equivalent of more than 25% of the annual operating budget of the MIT libraries. Thus, the cost of any future system seemed prohibitive (Locke, 1970; Raffel & Shishko, 1970; Stevens, 1993). The project seemed to be a bottomless financial pit. But once again the CLR responded to Overhage's pleas for more funding. In mid-1971 it granted MIT yet another $400,000 for the last year of the planned four year first-phase of the project (CLR6, 5 May, 1971).

1972, NO MORE REPRIEVES

What INTREX accomplished in 1971-1972 did not satisfy the council. As the grant period grew to a close, the news about results, or lack of them, made it very difficult for the CLR to give serious consideration to further support. Progress had not been as great as expected, even in terms of software. INTREX remained without a flexible search program. What had been written by 1971 was not the unique and "intelligent" system that had been promised in the mid- 1960s. The INTREX software showed little of the "artificial" intelligence that had become the trademark of the huge MAC project at the Institute (Hurlburt et al., 1971, p. 541; CLR1, 1971).

Disappointments over the INTREX software added to the worries about the project at the CLR and the NSF (CLR1, 9 November, 1971; Caruso, 1974, p. 488). The council had given grants totalling more than $2,500,000 to the project in the previous 5 years without providing the Ford Foundation with a true information "laboratory." A letter was forwarded to MIT on 26 April, 1972 ending the relationship between the council and INTREX. The NSF conducted its own less than complimentary review (CLR6, 24 March, 1972). MIT added its little insult. It turned off the 7094, INTREX's computer. There was very little to show for the CLR's millions--only the paper Pathfinders, 20,000 indexed articles in a limited field INTREX called "material science," two special "combined" terminals that had already become somewhat outdated and, perhaps, some students and staff who were motivated to continue the search for the automated library.

THEROUGH ROAD

INTREX was not the only large-scale automated library project to achieve less than expected. During the 1960s and early 1970s many expensive undertakings ended as disappointments (Boykin, 1991; Rush, 1988; National Academy of Science, 1971).

Project INTREX 31

Why did so little come from INTREX and the other large projects? First, all of them shared

an obvious problem: technology was not ready to provide the high-powered information engine

their goals demanded. Those that put too much faith in rapid technological advances, like INTREX, had to spend too much time waiting for the technology to appear. Research and management strategies had much to do with INTREX's shortcomings. The decisions to let the

nature of its "experiments" evolve and to avoid simulated experiments hurt the project. Also

important was Overhage's determination to pursue an "MIT only" policy in terms of people,

ideas, technology, and software. That opened the door to redundancy and to the serious problem of the inability to generalize INTREX results to other settings. More fundamental, INTREX

seemed a bit confused about its goals. Was it to be a project to reform the library or one to train

students who might later enter the library automation field? Was it a project for the library world

or for MIT's library? But perhaps the basic reason for the gap between goals and achievements was what Harvey

Brooks had worried about early in the relationship between the CLR and INTREX: INTREX's leaders thought it would be like the seemingly never-ending cold war projects the Institute had been involved with since the late 1940s. They thought funding would be available to support a string of always renewed attempts to turn problems into solutions. But INTREX was born in the

mid-1960s and came to a critical juncture in the early 1970s--when the United States entered a new era. Inflation and anti-war feelings, among many other changes, made permanent projects in universities less appealing to government and private sponsors.

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