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)
III. „The elephant’s head” and integrated information infrastructure for developing countries
159 act as adviser in the matter of library policy, but it has not been specified what this responsibility consists of. Except for a few technical actions, e.g. standardization of microfiches, those concerned with the depository libraries have done very limited contribution for a substantial common work. However, from the ACC reports on co-ordination concerning information systems and the IOB, it appears that an impressive number of decisions, recommendations, etc. have been prepared in the field of information. 2 3 Between 1961 and 1973 not less than 30 such items are listed (General Assembly, ECOSOC) on information policy. In fact, the number of decisions, recommendations, official reports, studies of the General Assembly, ECOSOC, UNDP, etc. on the "information support" only in the period 1946-1975 can be estimated at 350 to 400 items. To be found among them are such important studies as the mentioned Jackson-report or the Henderson-study. 2 4 The same applies to the volume of resolutions, projects, studies, etc. concerning "information support" by the specialized agencies, with special regard to UNESCO; after having launched the UNISIST programme, NATIS was launched four years later as another independent programme. (See under PGI's UNISIST Programme.) Other services and systems initiated by UNESCO are: CDS (Computerized Documentation Service — operational), DARE (Data Retrieval for Social Sciences), ISORID (for current research in documentation — operational), SPINES (acting by limited scale as a science and technology policy information exchange system) — to quote only a few examples for the abundance of initiatives concerning "information support". As to initiatives taken within the United Nations, they remind us of Baudelaire who, in his famous Albatros, says: "Ses ailes de géant l'empechent de marcher". And as the Duke puts it in Shakespeare's Othello (Act I, scene III.): "To vouch this is no proof", in other terms, the volume of initiatives by itself is not sufficient "without more wides and more over tests" (Shakespeare: op.cit.), i.e. without an effective management of information transfer.
