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Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by its patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.

Vannevar Bush#35

TechnologyInformationResearchOrganization

About this quote

What does it mean?
New encyclopedias with associative trails will help professionals like lawyers and doctors access related records quickly. This system supports rapid comparison and reference.
In plain terms
Associative trails in libraries help professionals find related info fast.
What can you take from it?
Create associative trails to speed up professional research.

Where it applies

  • library design
  • professional workflows
  • database planning

Putting it to work

  • build linked databases
  • map knowledge trails
  • improve search logic

Questions to consider

  • How do you connect ideas?
  • What helps you find answers?

Another view

Associative trails can be subjective and hard to standardize.

More from Vannevar Bush

  1. All this is conventional, except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry. It affords an immediate step, however, to associative index…

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  2. The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only at the salient items, and can follow at any time …

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  3. A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater f…

    Permalink to quote #33

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