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
118 Western European and North American scientists through structured information channels, and to facilitate communication among the European social science information institutions the Board of Directors of the centre, at its thirteenth session in Paris, 1976, decided on the launching the ECSSID Project. 3 One main difference between the ECSSID and similar, regional projects and organizations lies in the complexity of this project, the objective of which is rather ambitious. Its aims include the exchange of publications, information on on-going research, various aspects of automation (the problems of thesauri, compatibility of magnetic tapes, etc.), education and training, publishing activities, the organization of scientific conferences and workshops, various forms of exchange of experiences, and contributions to the development of national social science information and documentation (SSID) through bilateral and multilateral programmes, all in co-operation with existing similar programmes and organizations. 4 This means that ECSSID in no way contradicts other international programmes, nor does it overlap their objectives. 5 The structure, organization and activities of ECSSID The current policy and management of ECSSID are carried out by the International Organizing Committee (IOC), whose members were initially nominated by the Board of Directors of the Vienna Centre, selected on a reasonable geographic basis, and then completed by the representatives of the national SSID services, focal-points of ECSSID, during the meeting of its major decision-making body, the General Conference. The General Conference nominates working groups to discharge various activities, and publication boards to deal with the editorial work. The structure of ECSSID is very flexible. In the centrally planned economies, it is usually the social science information centres of the Academies of Sciences that assume the role of "focal points" as main contributors to ECSSID activities. They play the same role within ECSSID as do the National Commissions within Unesco, or the UNISIST and the inclusion of social science information in such a programme has repeatedly been examined by ad hoc teams set up by Unesco. The focal points, on the other hand, are linked with the national committes of the Vienna Centre, and partly rely on their own budgets. ECSSID meetings as a rule are financed by the host countries (focal points) as far as accommodation and organizational costs, and fees are concerned, while travel costs are covered by the participants. Focal points are more familiar to the socialist countries with their Academies of Sciences than to countries without centrally planned economies and science, yet difficulties have always been solved despite the fact that in some countries even the role of focal points as national organizing bodies of SSID sometimes raise problems. Focal points take the main responsibility of organizing, at the national level, the co-operation in social science information, thus contributing to ECSSID, and also have
