Coordination of documentation research and information services by the American Petroleum Institute

Centralized processing of technical information has been achieved for the petroleum‐refining industry through the American Petroleum Institute's Central Abstracting Service. The API operates this Service under the guidance of committees made up of member‐company representatives. Both management and information people cooperate on decisions that affect the cost and quality of the centralized services. Behind these decisions lies the pooled documentation experience and research of the individual companies, augmented by occasional specific studies conducted by the professionals who man the Service. Industry experience and research are tapped by the service of committee members themselves (who frequently consult with subject experts in their own companies), by appointment of study teams of industry expert in the specific documentation phases involved, by sending questionnaires to petroleum companies, and by holding open‐meeting discussions with users of API information services. Specific examples are cited of studies on classification systems, patent abstracting, Soviet‐literature abstracting, and machine coding.