Rózsa, George: Some Considerations of the Role of Scientific Libraries in the Age of Scientific and Technical Revolution. An Essay and Approach to the Problem (A MTAK kiadványai 50. Budapest, 1970)
17 Reference should be made here to attempts at ami researches in mechanized data processing and retrieval as a recent factor strengthening the documentation-oriented approach. If the momentarily utopistic conception formulated by a Hungarian author that "unwritten records of mankind will be stored in a few large international centres, being not huge libraries, taken in the present sense of the world, but giant data storing-machines, memories, the central register of human knowledge and culture", 8 became true, it would certainly involve revolutionary changes in the storage and diffusion of information, a change challenging the most up-to-date library work and even the value of the printed word as well as the traditional forms of publication. Tt would certainly involve a profound transformation of the world's cultural character. 9 Much experience will have to be gathered to enable us to tell whether this will ever be accomplished or is desirable at all. Rut one thing may be taken for sure even now: the solution of mechanized data processing is not a problem of documentation only but also that of scientific information in general, including scientific libraries. Here, too, the task is to find a solution to what is common, leaving the distinctive marks out of consideration. History-oriented approach This approach, which perhaps should have been dealt with first for the sake of historical fidelity, appears in the clearest form, both objectively and subjectively. Obviously enough, studying historical themes (the history of the book, history of libraries and printing) has been and will always be relevant to the scholarly profile of large historical libraries, inseparable from their holdings, traditions, and from the generations of librarians with classical erudition. This scholarly character has always existed and will exist as long as the traditional forms of publications survive, and even after that since the above-mentioned huge machines will never be able to substitute for historical studies, codexes, books, old and rare manuscripts, and their scholarly treatment. What the history-oriented approach represents is the conceptual continuity of historically developed large scientific libraries. It remains progressive as long as it assumes no aristocratic "traits" and does not consider the historical studies only as scholarly or scientific work. But as soon as such distortions appear, other types of library (and documentation) work will be underrated and qualified admittedly or not as practicism, ephemeral or as "non-scientific", etc., an attitude which will be regarded the students of the affected fields as "conservativism", "estrangement from life", etc., and will be reciprocated with an underestimation of historical subjects. This also leads to the stiffening of views on both sides as is the case in the librarydocumentation dispute, although historical themes, important as they are, do not represent the whole domain of library science. 8 ÁKOS, Károly: A tudomány fejlődése ós a könyvtárügy. Az Egyetemi Könyvtár Evkönyvei. 2. Budapest, 1964. p. 103 107. (The advancement of science and librarianship.) 9 In all probability, it was the anxiety about the over-growth of "machineculture" that propted László NÉMETH , the outstanding writer, to refer in Iiis work "Égető Eszter" to the machine as a devastating marauder.
