Selective dissemination of information

One of the key aspects of any administrative program
is the forwarding of appropriate information to personnel who
must use that information in the context of their work. The
historical study provides the educational administrator with
an instrument which will assist him in considering an information
management concept, the selective dissemination of
information (SDI). So that the educational administrator may
judge whether SDI is suitable for his own unique purposes, an
overview is given of SDI's various components, its development,
its application in a myriad of diversified fields, its trends,
and its issues. Since SDI's formalization, certain trends have emerged
in its use. These trends have included its expansion into
diverse fields, its coping with a proliferation of machine
readable data bases, an increase in subscriberships to SDI
systems, an increase on the use of group profiles by researchers,
the use of SDI in information networks, and the use
of microforms in SDI systems. There have been issues raised in the use of SDI, issues
which the educational administrator should be familiar with in
determining the applicability of SDI to his unique situation.
The issues explored relate to cost evaluation, quality evaluation,
user evaluation, data base problems, and limitations
due to copyright law.