REFERENCE SERVICES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01676R000700070004-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 1, 2003
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: August 25, 1964
• Content Type: MEMO

Approved For (ease 2003/08/tl I'DP80B016 000700070004-
(CLARRTFTCATTANI
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
In reply refer to
Action Memorandum No. . A-4 18
REFERENCE;
? Director/Budget, Programs Analysis and Manpower
1. As you know, I am considerably concerned over the expense
in manpower and money of the extensive reference services that CIA
has developed in the DD/I area, particularly in OCR. I am skeptical
at how extensively they are used and dubious as to whether they are
built on the basis of analysts' requirements or on the basis of what the
reference experts feel the analysts might need. This is admittedly a
difficult problem to approach for if you ask the analysts, they are
obviously going to want the most complete reference services at hand,
and if you ask the reference services experts, they are going to point
to the requests made to them (which are not at all revealing unless you
know how many potential requests there could be) and cite glowing
statistics as to what they have in their files.
2. With the growing volume of reports coming into the
organization on a daily basis, we may soon be in the position of having
our files unmanageable. It is already obvious that we must be much
more discriminatory in what we file and that somebody must be in a
position to make Solomonian judgments on what should or shoudn't be
filed.
USPENSE DATE:
Approved For Releas
A
C
T
I
0
tN
Al
E
Al
0
R
A
N
D
U
M
Date 25 August 1964
 25X1
Approved ForElease 2003/08/05 : CIA-RDP80B0167 F 00700070004-6
3. It occurs to me that one way to get at this problem might
be to study the habits of the analysts. I therefore wonder if it would be
profitable to conduct a spot survey of the analysts in the four big
research and analysis offices of the DD/I and DD/S&T: OCI, OBI, ORR
and OSI. We could ask the analysts such questions as: how often do they
use the reference services? Which reference services do they use?
What sort of service do they get? Do they keep any files of their own?
What sort of files do they keep? What do they do with their files? Could
they do completely without files and rely exclusively on the reference
services ?
25X1
do they rely on the
Biographic Register? 25X1
The above questions are o v1ous y only quick and superficial ideas, but I
think they illustrate my point. It seems to me that if we took a group of
20-50 analysts, we might learn some interesting facts. Let me have your
views at your convenience.
25X1
an it atric k
Executive Director
Approved For Release 2003)08/O& ICIA-RDP80B0l676R000700070004-6