A clearinghouse for scientific and technical meetings: Organizational and operational problems

There has been much interest expressed in the formation of a clearinghouse for scientific and technical meetings. In spite of this interest, no clearinghouse has been formed. Whether or not there is a valid need for the existence of such a clearinghouse has not been proven, but in this paper it is assumed that the need exists. Discussion of the organizational and operational problems involved follows. These problems include: (a) definition of area and level of coverage of the subject matter of any given meeting; (b) definition of the geographic area from which the meeting will draw its attendance; (c) definition of the area of interest of the clearinghouse in the face of difficulties imposed by mission‐ or project‐oriented meetings and other interdisciplinary meetings; (d) attaining comprehensive coverage in spite of the difficulties in obtaining inputs from the organizers of government classified and other closed meetings, as well as from the organizers of ad hoc meetings; and (e) the need to ensure that the organizers of meetings will make use of the clearinghouse. Solutions to these problems will not yield to a simple approach, but will be obtainable only on the basis of careful study of the structure and dynamics of the national and international scientific and technical meetings network.