Information dissemination with microforms

The National Technical Information service (NTIS) is the major source for information on government research and development and analyses; some 85 percent of the close to $20 billion worth conducted or paid for by the federal government yearly and made publicly available. NTIS shins 11500 information products each day, supplying, therefore, close to 4 million documents and microforms annually. Of this total, about 1500000 microforms (mostly fiche, 4 × 6 inches) were sent out in 1974, much of it through the Selected Research in Microfiche (SRIM), an automatic biweekly system in which microfiche are distributed to users in an extremely flexible system. For example, distribution can be made according to subject categories, subject terms, or even by subcollections, or any combination of these. There are more than 500 subject categoreis, more than 200000 possible descriptive terms, and subcollections that number in the many hundreds. The system employs 24 × fiche, although older parts of the collection may be 20 ×.