Toward national information networks

In the pages that follow are two articles and three letters to the editor that deal with a big and growing problem: gathering and dissemination of scientific and technical information. They are timely because later this month a special symposium will gather to discuss the problem and suggest what physicists should do to solve it. The symposium will be part of the annual January meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Physical Society, which is discussed in detail elsewhere in this issue. William W. Havens, Jr. of Columbia University has arranged the program.