Computerised Approaches to the Literature of Economics: from ISIS to DEVSIS

Of the hundreds of computer-readable bibliographic data bases in existence in the world today, indexing and abstracting services in the social sciences have only recently started making use of computers. This paper examines those services and systems directly relevant to economists. High cost of indexing and abstracting and lack of coordination among secondary services are two factors which hamper the growth of improved or new services. International sharing of resources (data banks and indexes) by means of computer networks appears to be the only reasonable approach to take-even in the short run.