Library and Information Science

This paper has two purposes. One is to explain how the abstracter makes a meaningful abstract selecting and concluding significant information in one article. The other is concerning comprehension and memory of discourse in abstracting process. The focus is whether the abstracter makes an abstract understanding whole contents of discourse or only extracted information from it. Experiments were made in order to approach the problems mentioned above.

The auther made same abstracting and comprehension tests for four groups; (A) students of library and information science who had learned about abstracting standards and trained many times. (B) students of library and information science who did not know about abstracting standards at all. (C) researchers who had learned about abstracting standards. (D) researchers who did not know about abstracting standards at all.

As a result, three trends were found. (1) The abstracter, knowing standards of abstracting and having been trained to make a good abstract using macrorules intentionary (2) Those who know standards of abstracting can understand the contents of article better than those who know no standards, because the former use meta-cognition more busily (3) As a researcher has a professional macrorules and macrostructures about his own field unconsciously, he can make a good abstract and understand whole contents of the article in spite of his ignorance of standards of abstracting.