SOCIOECONOMIC ASPECTS OF MATERIALS DATA - SERVING THE USER

Numeric and factual data on materials are used, together with physical laws and other data, directly in the decision-making processes of engineering design, production, performance assessment, and scientific research. These processes are conducted by human experts or by computers running under their supervision. The people involved spend most of their time doing things other than retrieving information or data. They have needs and make demands on the systems that they use that can easily be overlooked by those who provide, manage, and operate the systems; so relationships between data users and data managers can be rather indiferrent. At an earlier stage, the way in which data generators and data system managers are associated can have a important influence upon the quality of the data included in database and expert systems. Relationships between data users, data managers, and data generators are governed by a social climate that has changed little in the last 30 or so years. Systems that are now starting to provide the essential links between these communities will affect this climate and that in the wider society which they serve. Numeric database systems in general, and those on materials data in particular, have features that are quite different in several important respects to those familiar in conventional text storage and retrieval practices. This paper looks at these differences, at some of the needs of numeric data users, and at the operational, convenience, added value, quality, and benefits features that they expect. Economic consequence of serving these needs and some of the wider social implications are explored.