György Rózsa: Information: from claims to needs (Joint edition published by the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Kultura Hungarian Foreign Trading Company. Budapest, 1988)
II. International relations in the field of scientific information
108 European socialist countries and Mongolia 6 concluded an agreement on the elaboration of an international system of information in social sciences known asMISON. 7 Similar co-operation in the sphere of social science information exists among the countries of the Common Market, the OECD, CMEA, as well as among Arab countries. At the international level the Data Retrieval System for the Social Sciences (DARE) and the International Information System of Social Science Concepts (INTERCONCEPT) of Unesco 8 are of particular importance. The significance of the role of international organizations in the field of information transfer lies above all in their promoting favourable conditions for activities in this field. These organizations are instrumental in promoting various meetings among information experts from different countries, and in establishing personal partnership between them. The international organizations help set the course of national information policies as well as guide the attitude and interest of experts in the direction of international interconnections for information transfer. Through standardization these organizations also play an important role in bringing the information technologies closer together, thereby paving the way for favourable objective conditions of international co-operation and information transfer. While the activities of international intergovernmental organizations are very useful from many points of view, the effectiveness of these activities is limited. Most of these organizations are more competent to discuss theoretical information policy issues than to implement concrete information programmes. The effectiveness of the intergovernmental organizations' work is often impeded by complex political and administrative considerations. Moreover, such effectiveness is primarily contingent on the financial means rather than the legal status of these organizations. This is especially true for international organizations instrumental in the transfer of social science information. By contrast, the international non-governmental organizations generally have limited resources and staff — frequently working on a voluntary basis — but because of their direct links to information services, their expertise is still indispensable in promoting international co-operation. The following survey examines selected, significant, mostly international institutions and organizations which promote the transfer of social science information. I CSS ID 9 The International Committee for Social Science Information and Documentation is a non-governmental international organization which was established in 1950 with the support of Unesco. The activity of ICSSID, carried out at its own initiative or in response to requests from Unesco, is concentrated in three areas: (a) elaborating proposals and plans concerning social science information policy; (b) contributing to the normative activity through the development of formats, thesauri and other means of social science information handling and processing; (c) issuing publications and thereby fostering worldwide social science information exchange; mention should be made in particular of the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences consisting of four
