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Roger Kent Summit (born 1930, Detroit Michigan) is an expert in online information services and is the founder and chairman emeritus of Dialog (online database). Saul Herner, former Editor in Chief of Information Resources Press lauded Summit as the "father of online systems." [1]
Education
Summit received a Bachelor's degree in Psychology (1952), a Master's Degree in Business Administration (1957) and a Doctorate in Management (1965) from
Stanford University in Stanford, California.
[2]
Technical Innovation
In the summer of 1960 while still a doctoral student, Roger Summit took a job with the
Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. where he was tasked with improving the company's
information retrieval systems.
[3] When the Lockheed Corporation formed the Information Sciences Laboratory (1964
[1] ) their mission for the lab was to examine how third-generation hardware would affect computing in the information sciences. Third-generation hardware, typified by the
IBM 360 computer, introduced mass
random-access storage, remotely controlled processing via telecommunications, and a time-sharing operation that allowed many people to utilize the computer at the same time. Roger Summit and a colleague submitted a proposal to the Lockheed Corporation to further explore and develop this technology. He was then given responsibility for information retrieval. Organizations were already conducting searches by inputting queries on
punched cards. However, searches couldn’t be revised after they were entered and during the process, therefore the outcomes of the search were at times unpredictable. The equipment that they were using was considered second generation equipment. Summit’s goal was to design an interactive retrieval language with third generation equipment that would by pass some of the problems they had with the second generation equipment.
[4]
Some of the problems Summit hoped to overcome were
[4] :
The team Dr. Summit was now working with consisted of six people (himself included)
By 1965, the team had a working prototype of the database that would later become known as Dialog [5]. Moving forward, the team defined a standard internal format into which all types of formats that were used by suppliers could be converted. This allowed their users to learn a single standard search procedure and apply that to all databases on the system. Dialog loaded all content available from suppliers and maintained historical material online for the life of the database.
Once they started commercial service, they wanted to capture as much of the world’s knowledge that was in computer-readable format and offer a consistent retrieval language and a consistent presentation. Roger’s dream was to provide an answer to almost any curiosity. By 1966 the team won a contract from
NASA
[5] and over the next 8 years Dialog would win contracts with the
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the
European Space Agency and the
U.S. Department of Education to assist with each organization's information retrieval systems and methods.
[4] Interactive access became increasingly valuable to many organizations, in 1972 Roger and his team arranged to offer the ERIC (
Educational Resources Information Center) and NTIS (
National Technical Information Service) databases to any subscriber with a computer terminal. It was during this time when the DIALOG Information Retrieval Service, named after its information retrieval language was known as the world’s first commercial online service.
Impact
Hailed as the 'Father of Online Systems,' Summit's work on DIALOG changed the information industry and provided a foundation for further research and development. Databases such as ERIC,
LexisNexis,
ProQuest,
EBSCOHost among others all owe much to Roger Summit and the creation of DIALOG. The work with DIALOG would pave the way for today's leading online search engines like
Yahoo! and
Google. It shaped the growth of the online industry improving search capabilities. Having precise search capabilities was a product of Dialog's added large and consistent formatted databases and the incorporation of a search language (i.e.
Boolean phrases). By providing a wider range of databases for users to search through, DIALOG allowed for the ability to to multi-task in search. Users could find solutions with one query instead of running a separate search at a later time
[1].
Awards & Recognition
[2]
From the Professional Biography of Dr. Summit, below is a partial list of the numerous awards and recognitions he has received (in ascending order):
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(1) http://www.dialog.com/about/biographies/rogersummit_bio.pdf
(3) http://faculty.washington.edu/kendo/rogersummit.html (4) http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/oct03/SummitWeb.shtml (5) http://www.alacrawiki.com/index.php?title=Roger_Summit
Biographical Information: Roger K. Summit Reflections on the Beginnings of Dialog - The Birth of Online Information Access Articles Written By and About Dr. Roger Smith