Librarians Go High-Tech, Perhaps: The Ford Foundation, the CLR and INTREXAuthor(s): Colin BurkeSource: Libraries & Culture, Vol. 31, No. 1, Reading & Libraries I (Winter, 1996), pp. 125-129Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25548426 .

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Librarians Go High-Tech, Perhaps: The Ford

Foundation, the CLR and INTREX

Colin Burke

In the late 1950s the Ford Foundation handed the Council on Library Resources the responsibility of establishing a

library research laboratory. The Council found it difficult to define what such a laboratory should be, and it was more than a half-decade before the Council decided to become

the major sponsor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Project INTREX. Unfortunately, INTREX did not live up to the expectations of

the Council. In the early 1970s, after the expenditure of several million

dollars, INTREX ended with the Council less than pleased. INTREX had become a project for developing applied technology rather than one fo

cused upon research into information methods that would help all types of libraries.

One of the most famous of the early automated library projects, INTREX, was tied to the great progressive force in library moderniza

tion after World War II, the Council on Library Resources (CLR). My discussion is based upon an examination of the published literature on

INTREX and the materials contained in the CLR's archives. For those

who wish more detail, I suggest a short article on the subject that will

appear in Information Processing and Management in the near future, and to a much longer piece that I plan to present abroad, and, if the shrink

ing pool of academic grants allows, a monograph on INTREX and other

early automation projects. Those hoped-for funds will allow much addi

tional research, including trips to the archives at the Massachusetts In

stitute of Technology and the Ford Foundation.

Beginnings, Mandates, and Disappointments

In the mid-1960s, America's richest library foundation, the Council on Library Resources, supported what was for its time the attempt to cre

ate a library revolution. The Council provided the greatest amount of

financing for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Project INTREX, which promised to devise advanced technologies and methods Colin Burke is associate professor in the Department of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Libraries & Culture, Vol. 31, No. 1, Winter 1996 ?1996 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819

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126 L&C/ The Ford Foundation, the CLR and INTREX

for a technologically advanced model "research library of the 1970s

and beyond." INTREX was impressive and is remembered as one of

the most significant library experiments of all time. The project lasted

almost a decade and it received some $20,000,000 (in 1990 dollars) from

the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and pri vate sources. Over one-half of INTREX's support came from the CLR.

The Council on Library Resources was unique among the agencies fi

nancially able to sponsor information projects in the postwar era; it was

the nation's only private philanthropic organization with the potential to shape the information revolution. The CLR's mandate and financial

power overshadowed the Carnegie Foundation's interests in libraries in

the postwar era. Created in 1956 by the Ford Foundation, the Council was generously funded. More important, it was run by and for librarians

and was charged with improving all types of libraries, especially aca

demic research libraries for social scientists and humanists. The CLR's

first leader, Verner Clapp, was a man for all libraries, not just those

deemed central to America's critical battle of the late 1950s, the one

against Soviet military and space technology.

Among its many investments in library research, INTREX was the

Council's largest, but the Council's involvement in INTREX did not lead

to INTREX becoming a project directed by librarians or even documen

talists. And INTREX did not become a project tailored to the needs of

the traditional academic research library. INTREX was run by and for

applied scientists and engineers.

Project INTREX fell very short of the expectations of all its sponsors. After some eight years INTREX ended with litde more than a few pieces of soon outdated hardware, some homeless software, and twenty thou

sand indexed articles in a limited field called "material science." There

is litde indication that INTREX made any significant or lasting technical

contribution to the Age of Information, although some of the INTREX

team went on to make contributions to the cause of information re

trieval. In fact, the Council's 1993-1994 historical survey of its forty years of achievements has a three-page list of its important projects?but INTREX is not included.

In the Absence of Alternatives

Why did the Council support a project for an engineering informa

tion system? Why did INTREX fall so short of expectations? The first

question seems to have a simple answer. In 1960, the Ford Foundation

decided to help America's Cold War effort and committed millions of

dollars to the cause of scientific information retrieval. It told the CLR to

take the responsibility of establishing a "laboratory or center involving

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127

the activities of specialized scientific personnel." It was clear that the

Ford Foundation wanted to help the United States regain first place in

world science, especially applied science related to military and space

technology. But the answer is not as simple as the mandate suggests. The Ford

grant did not dictate that the "laboratory" should be shaped by non

librarians nor did it order that the "laboratory" be oriented to fulfilling the needs of only a few types of researchers. The second question also

has a complex answer. A blend of historical contingencies, professional cultures, and technological barriers and surprises led to INTREX ac

complishing less than expected.

Perhaps the Council's most important historical contingency was a

lack of alternatives. It waited with its millions of special Ford Foundation

dollars for more than seven years before a serious applicant appeared.

Despite the escalating activity in the information retrieval field, only MIT came to the Council with a proposal. As a result, the Council made an inconvenient marriage with a project that focused upon applied-sci ence information problems, that relied upon nonlibrarians for guid ance, and that was dependent upon yet-to-be technologies that refused

to appear on schedule and that could not meet budget targets. The first hints of the role of professional cultures in shaping the na

ture of the later Council-INTREX project came in late 1961, when the

Council gave J. C. R. Licklider, a pyscho-acoustic and computer expert, a

large grant to form a team to try to define the Ford Foundation's library

"laboratory." Licklider was asked to define more than a laboratory for

applied science; he was asked to form a team to draw the outline of the

perfect library of the future. Licklider decided not to appoint any librar ians to his team. The two years of work at Boston's engineering think

tank, Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), was conducted by computer experts. As a result, the outcome was not a set of true

experiments but

the book, The Library of the Future. That book went far beyond extolling the worth of interactive computers and needed revisions in library tech

nology and methods?it called for "procognitive" systems to replace the

library and librarians. The book was, in essence, a declaration that the

computer scientist turned information expert should determine the na

ture and purpose of future information systems.

Perhaps a bit shocked by the BBN recommendations, the Council on

Library Resources did not renew the relationship with BBN. The Coun cil remained without the "laboratory" the Ford Foundation wanted so

desperately, and waited more years without finding a home for its "labo

ratory" funds. Then, some close colleagues of Licklider came to the CLR with the proposal for the INTREX project.

At first glance, it seemed that INTREX's goals met the CLR's interest

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128 L&C/ The Ford Foundation, the CLR and INTREX

in improving all libraries as well as meeting its need for a "laboratory." In 1966, INTREX had impeccable credentials. The project's goals had

received professional endorsements and international attention because

of the Woods Hole INTREX planning conference.

INTREX proposed to turn MIT's Barker engineering library into a

"real" information laboratory that would serve the needs of all types of

library users. INTREX planned to build a system based on computerized interactive bibliographic searching and full-text transmission. Once

those technologies were in place, the MIT library would conduct a wide

range of "library" experiments. The plan was acceptable to the CLR because it seemed to fit the Ford

Foundation's desire to aid applied science and at the same time help all

types of research libraries. Despite the millions of dollars such an effort

would cost, the years it might take to develop the required machines and

programs, and some fears that engineers and applied scientists would

mold INTREX to fit their conceptions of how research projects should

be conducted and how information systems should function, the CLR

began to underwrite INTREX.

Initial Commitments and Later Problems

INTREX's operational leader was an engineer-manager, Carl Over

hage. He had directed Lincoln Laboratory's work on computerized air

defense systems such as SAGE. Overhage chose as his second in com

mand another MIT electronics luminary, J. Francis Reintjes. Together,

they made some early and critical decisions that caused many later prob lems for INTREX. The central commitments were: (1) to center the

project within MIT's Electronics System Laboratory (ESL), where hard

ware naturally became the focus?other work was put aside until two

pieces of esoteric equipment, a special CRT and a television-microform

selector for full-text transmission, were completed (they never were fin

ished); (2) to create a special and very expensive database of indexes

and full-text for "materials science"; (3) to not rigorously define user

experiments and to defer any of them until the special equipment and

database were developed; (4) to write the project's software in a special

language supported by only a few computers in the world and to con

tinue to use that language when it became likely that even MIT would

abandon it; (5) to make INTREX an MIT-only project using staff from

the ESL and the engineering library; (6) to pursue what seems to have

been an "invented-here" policy, thus failing to import time-saving meth

ods or hardware; and (7) to assume that INTREX would receive the

same treatment as earlier massive Cold War projects that continued as

long as a problem existed.

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129

Years of Work without Victory

Such commitments troubled the Council on Library Resources' staff

and the Council's prestigious advisory boards, but the Ford Founda

tion's demand for a "laboratory" and the absence of alternatives to

INTREX led to four major grants by CLR to the project. Unfortunately for the Council, as it made its fourth grant it became clear that INTREX

would have its computer turned off, its software orphaned, and its life

ended in the early 1970s with few experiments in information transfer

completed. The some twenty thousand deeply indexed articles had to

find a new system.

Apparently, INTREX produced some motivated staff and students

who contributed to later library causes, but the only other visible contri

bution was an anomaly, the Pathfinders. They were paper sheets direct

ing students to reference materials in various subjects. While useful, they were hardly the makings of the high-tech library revolution that had

seemed within reach when INTREX began.

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