Claire Kelly Schultz

Claire Kelly Schultz (November 17, 1924 - May 28, 2015) was an American computer consultant and academic. She was a leading figure in the early development of automated information retrieval systems and information science. she was particularly known for her work in thesaurus construction and machine-aided indexing, chemical company she "developed a machine-sorted card system that employed Boolean retrieval logic. Her first use of punched cards in 1949 used the Mooers Zator system." This has been seen as a "transitional role of such punched-card systems toward later use of computers for information retrieval".

Early life and education Claire Kelly was born on November 17, 1924, in Etters, Pennsylvania, to Joseph and Mary (Ross) Kelly. She went to a one-room school, completing 8th grade by age 12. At age 13, her family moved to a farm near Linglestown, Pennsylvania. Claire looked after the housework and livestock as well as attending school. At fifteen, she worked as governess and cook for another family, to earn money for college. From 1946 to 1948, Claire worked at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology. Initially hired as a librarian, she soon became a laboratory assistant to Dr. Edmond J. Farris, studying human reproduction and fertility. Once her child was born, she joined Sperry Rand, where she worked on information retrieval research from 1958 to 1961. She is credited with organizing Drexel's information science program, launched in 1963 by Dean John F. Harvey.

In 1962, she served as the first female president of the American Documentation Institute (now the Association for Information Science and Technology).

From 1973 to 1982 she was Professor of Information Science and Director of Libraries at the Medical College of Pennsylvania. There she helped to establish the Florence A. Moore Library of Medicine.

She was one of the first people to try to document the history of information science. Her papers are on deposit at the Charles Babbage Institute. Having experienced the beginning of the information age, Schultz's perspective on the advent of the Internet was that it presented "a huge, formless haystack in which to find needles", which would make "for some very complex mixing and matching" in database searches.

Schultz died of Alzheimer's disease, on May 28, 2015.

Awards ASIS Award of Merit Association for Information Science and Technology, 1980