Claire K. Schultz

Claire K. Schultz begins the interview by discussing her childhood in south central Pennsylvania. Raised primarily by her father and grandmother, Schultz dreamed of becoming a doctor from a young age. Inspired by her grandmother's belief in her abilities, Schultz graduated from Juniata College in three years, and went on to medical school after a year of work in the Philadelphia State Hospital. Forced to leave medical school by the birth of her first child, Schultz went on to a job as a research assistant at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, and then to Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD), where she held her first position in a library. Schultz's interest in information retrieval began at Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratory, where she met Calvin Mooers. After talking to Mooers about his ideas regarding information retrieval, Schultz joined forces with Robert Ford, of MSD's Pharmacology Lab, and began a campaign to get an IBM 101 system at Merck Sharp & Dohme. Schultz wrote her master's thesis at Drexel University in Library Science on the MSD library system. While working at MSD, Schultz met John Mauchly, Eugene Garfield, and Peter Luhn. As one of the pioneer documentalists, Schultz worked at Sperry Rand Univac Corporation, and later at the Institute for the Advancement of Medical Communication, and taught various courses on information science at Drexel University and at the Medical College of Pennsylvania. Schultz closes her interview with anecdotes about her post-retirement hobbies, and her work as a computer consultant in a local elementary school.

Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology

1946 - 1948 Research Associate

Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories

1949 - 1957 Librarian

Sperry Rand Univac Corporation

1958 - 1961 Senior Systems Analyst

Institute for the Advancement of Medical Communication

1961 - 1970 Research Scientist

Drexel University

1961 - 1970 Associate Professor of Information Science

Freelance

1970 - 1972 Consultant

Medical College of Pennsylvania

1973 - 1982 Professor of Information Science and Director of Libraries

Robert V. Williams

Robert V. Williams is a professor of library and information science at the University of South Carolina. He holds a Ph.D. in library and information studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; an M.S. in library and information science from Florida State University; and an M.A. in history from New York University. Before joining the University of South Carolina in 1978, he was an archivist and information services manager for the Ford Foundation, and the Georgia Department of Archives and History. Williams has also been an information consultant for many organizations including Appalachian Council of Governments of Greenville, South Carolina, and Pontifical Catholic University Madre y Maestra, Dominican Republic. He came to the Chemical Heritage Foundation as the Eugene Garfield Fellow in the History of Scientific Information in 1997. He is a member of the South Carolina Historical Records Advisory Board, the American Library Association (ALA), and the American Society for Information Science (ASIS), where he served as chair of ASIS History and Foundations of Information Science Special Interest Group in 1994–1995. Williams is also a member of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) and Chair of the SLA Membership Committee. Williams has numerous publications on the historical role of information science.