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
116 An open exchange of information? In order to judge what relationship might exist between a nation's informatics and the international field the following should be noted: In respect of scientific interchange our country is ranking about the twentieth while in its economic relations it might be about twenty fifth. In the European context it is rather a small country. Added to these one must add the isolation of its native language. The process we witness might be sketched thus: linguistic isolation -•*• open economic system -•*• open science —> open system for information. From the above certain criteria can be deducted vis à vis the international exchange of information: a) we have an interest both in the traditional and the computer based exchange of information; b) home produced databanks are rarely needed in the humanities; c) in science and technology we needed to use international databanks off or online; d) off and online are not mutually exclusive but supportive; e) whenever possible our national specific input should be offered; this has both scientific and economic advantages 6 ; f) no databanks or viewdata systems should ever forget that the basis of scientific information is the library and its services; g) the training of specialists in informatics is a key problem. NOTES 1. Newsidic ISSN 0141-6243. It is actively supported by IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis), Laxemburg, Austria. 2. EUSIDIC in association with the Information Centre, Ljubljana. Programme of the 1980 Anniversary Conference. Problems and Prospects of International Information Exchange. 23-26 September, 1980. Bled, Yugoslavia. 10 p. 3. EUSIDIC Policy Statement. (P.O. Box 85566, The Hague, Netherlands.) 4. EUSIDIC Database Guide. (1st ed.) Alex Tomberg. Oxford. 1979. Since then updated. 5. Some criteria for the participation in the international exchange of information: a Hungarian view. 8 p. 6. In the case of Chemical Abstracts the input of various countries like Britain, Japan are provided by the experts of those countries. Their work is reciprocated by services. In: TMT, 1981.3.93-96. p.
