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)
I. The socio-professional aspects of the development of the scientific information with special regard to social sciences
But if it was a possible trend is it desirable? Technically speaking, yes. From the points of view of openness, intellectual stimulus and exchange of opinions — whatever matters in human relations — the trend is undesirable. In many cases, such as those who are bedridden or have no access to libraries, its "coming to the home" should be advantageous. Otherwise the system, for all its technological wonder, falls short of the infinite selection offered by libraries. Indeed it can dehumanise reading, isolate the researcher and alianate man from its natural surroundings, from the aesthetic joys of reading. In many countries today the problem is not (or not yet) related to the "library coming to the home" but the opposite: the lack of spaces in libraries. What would the realistic cultural "model" be like that has been so much sought after and which, as Lunacharski said, has the limitless possibility of growth within a harmonious civilisation? One of the possible answers was given by Victor Hugo who in 1850 said in debate of the legislators: "Wherever there is a piece of land tilled there should also be a book. .. Free and compulsory education should start with the village school and gradually. .. it should reach the standard of the Academie Française... It would open the gates of knowledge before everyone ... and from the schools and the intellectual workshops inte the libraries and to the university departments a colossal network would be formed which could radiate culture nation-wide and would give birth to new abilities and fuel devotion to vocations. In other words the State would see to it that the totality of knowledge would be available for everyone. .. to connect the country's mind with the nation's heart." Reading and information to scientific work are channels of this connection. In countries not abundant in energy or in natural resources (at mid point between developing and developed) further points should also be kept in mind: 1. Of the national potential information is most readily renewable; 2. It does not lose its value but (when renewed) increases it; 3. It is a power base that can always be exploited; 4. Even when technical and material provisions are lower information for research could reach an international standard which is relatively cheap at least when compared to other costs and investments. If the above points are promoted by the library profession of a nation then the connecting of the mind and the hearts will be a step nearer in the following years. In: Magyar Tudomány (Central Organ of the HAS), 1981.9. 641-642.p.
