For the time, this was a tremendous amount of data ("big data of the 60's"). To deal with it, a computer database was developed, called the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES). SPIRES not only organized bibliographic information in a standardized way across universities; it also allowed researchers to request a list of preprints to be sent to them. Since papers could not be emailed yet, they were sent by regular mail. While SPIRES greatly improved the flow of information, it often still took weeks for preprints to reach their requester’s mailbox.