TANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS

April 13, 1977

Dr. Eugene Garfield

Director, Institute for Scientific Information
325 Chestnut Street

Philadelphia, Penn. 19106

Dear Gene,

I am enclosing a copy of a product announcement that just came across my
desk: The Holofile.

I don't know anything about this particular technology beyond what appears
in the enclosure, but what they have to say appears to be entirely plausible.
In digital format, each card should be able to encompass about a thousand pages
of SCI text. I don't know exactly what they mean about the capabilitie . the
terminal, but if not now, it won't be very tong before fairly low cost/equipment
will indeed be able to search fairly rapidly ~ let's say a few minutes per card -
through such a file. That number is probably quite conservative and might be
improved from minutes to seconds with special purpose technology.

It occurred to me that we have to keep our mind open about this option
for the distribution of ISI's products. The brochure doesn't say what these
terminals will cost, but whatever the present price, this is bound to go down
rapidly and even now, if it is the range of several thousand dollars, it may
have to be considered as a competitor for the printed page.

This kind of distribution will of course be competitive with on-line access,
and I suppose it won't be too long before there are better working examples
(there are a few shaky prototypes) of this kind of memory technology in support
of information retrieval systems accessed on-line. More concretely, I wondered
if this might not be the time to start looking into, for example, a joint venture
with Holofile, with respect to the marketing on a lease basis of access to
information files like the SCI. This is a different wrinkle from what Lockheed
has started and might give ISI and opening to the electronic media for infor-
mation products in a way that the others have not begun to preempt.

I cannot tell from the brochure what "low cost terminal" really means,
but it should not be too difficult to find this out.

Sincerely yours,

LAN

Joshug’ Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 * (415) 497-5052