Information and knowledge worker productivity

Information is an essential ingredient in office work, in management decision making, and in knowledge worker productivity. Automated office information systems are designed to process information more efficiently and more effectively so as to increase the productivity of the office staff and the profitability of the organization. The rationale and the functions of automated office information systems are reviewed along with the methods used and difficulties encountered in measuring office productivity. Information science can and should be applied to study the economic benefits of office information systems, to investigate the social and behavioral implications of this new technology, and to help plan governmental policies resulting from the changes now taking place in the environment and in the storage, transfer, display, and use of information.     

From Great Expectations to Bleak House

The fortunes of higher education from the 1960s - not a linear descent but a complex picture. How closely does the declining reputation of higher education at least in central government circles - correlate with declining economic and technological performance, and how much has it been a product of other factors - for example, binary policy or student radicalism? The article addresses these questions and other features of the loss of higher education's esteem across the two decades from the Robbins report to Sir Keith Joseph's Green Paper.     

Shrouding the endless frontier—Scientific communication and national security: Considerations for a policy balance sheet

Various normal and essential scientific communication activities, including unclassified research dissemination, publication, and exchanges in the open classroom and among scholars, have been limited recently by the Federal government through more vigorous enforcement and stringent application of existing national security controls. These actions are prompted by a growing anxiety about the acquisition of American science and technology by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. Such controls, however, may have a restrictive effect not only on scientific communication, but also on scientific achievement and advancement in the United States. Recognizing this danger, certain countervailing ideas are recounted and discussed here as points of balance both to justifications for these recent limitations and to arguments favoring even broader government authority to constrain scientific communication for reasons of national security.