Selective dissemination of information-a new approach to effective communication

Abstract
A first pilot test of a system to disseminate pertinent documents to individual persons selectively has been tried using IBM Research personnel and a variety of document sources. A detailed study of the user populations was made by means of diaries, interviews, and a mail survey. The effectiveness of the system is measured by 1) the percentage of unwanted or "trash" documents sent to the user, and 2) the percentage of documents the user wants but are not sent by the system. User responses to systematically and randomly selected documents, both integral parts of the system, were used to estimate these parameters.