Half a century with scientific medical information in Czechoslovakia

The author reviews his participation in the development of scientific medical information in the former Czechoslovakia, beginning with the classical methods using the Universal Decimal Classification, through the development of the method of manual peek-a-boo punched cards, till the experimental and routine use of the first commercially available National Elliott 8O3B and Minsk-22 computers (Index Radiohygienicus with a KWIC index). Simultaneously he founded and managed the Information Center for Radiation Protection, and later the Information Center of the Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology. Then he was charged with the projection and methodological guidance of the system of libraries and information centers in the Czech health institutions. In his theoretical and experimental research the author was interested in the feasibility of algorithms for the selection of keywords from scientific texts, in the modelling of the communication of medical scientific information in Czechoslovak conditions, and in extensive statistical studies of the relation between information supply to authors and their citation behavior and citedness. Practical measures for overcoming information barriers were suggested. All results of these activities were published in more than 100 papers and research reports, half of which are cited in References.