Some post-war models of the information chain

Reviews the literature of the information chain, analogous to ecology's food chain, taking the Royal Society Scientific Information Conference, 1948, as the seminal point. Describes eight successive models of the information chain each incorporating contemporary thoughts and experiences. Each model is labelled with the year to which it may be said to refer: Distribution of Scientific Information 1948; Document Network 1967; Dissemination of Scientific and Technical Information 1978; Structure of Scientific Literature 1979; Ecosystem of Scientific Communication 1980; Information Chain 1988; Information Chain 1989; Pathways of Information Flow 1993. Although of wide applicability, the focus of interest for information scientists tends to be the communication of learned information.