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

56 could not proceed further than the initial groundwork owing to the above-mentioned causes and last but not least to the lack of financial means. Networking everywhere in the world - in Hungary as well - implies one or other form of coordination and cooperation. Someone has to organize the cooperation, eventually a division of labour and to provide for its regulation. Among the factors contrary to coordination and cooperation is the reason that usually the real backer of coordination is the coordinator himself, while the others - who are "being coordinated " are less enthusiastic about other institutions interfering with their affairs. I think this reason accounts for the negative tendencies in networking. 5. Attempt at an organized cooperation (Working Group for Social Science Information) What has been outlined above has, I think, a general validity which includes Hungary. The recognition which led the concerned professional authorities and bodies, as well as quite a few representatives of the Hungarian SSID further, can be summarized thus: SSID networking should be based on mutual interest. Such motivation must be found and made loose enough not to make the participants feel to be guided administratively, at the same time they should positively benefit from their participation in networking. In other words, all the presumed effective guidance, good will and enthusiasm are insufficient by themselves for networking. In the late seventies, the supreme science policy body of the government, the Committee on Science Policy (being presided over by a deputy prime-minister) with the effective help of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, set up the Social Science Coordination Committee (SSCC for short), to plan and harmonize social sciences research works going on in Hungary. This committee - jointly with the Ministry of Culture also responsible for the professional supervision of libraries — began to oversee the development and modernization of SSID. The Working Group for Social Science Information (WGSSI) was set up to act as its advisory body. Today this Working Group also helps the competent bodies of the Ministry of Culture. As it has worked out over the years, SSCC exercises direct professional supervision over WGSSI and has been providing — practically up to now — for its finances (more details later). The president of SSCC has invited the heads of large social science libraries to participate in the work. The WGSSI has 15 to 20 members. This is the adequate size of membership still capable of working flexibly and since it includes the leading staff members of basic SSID institutions too, it can provide for an appropriate institutional background necessary for all kinds of organizational work. To put it another way: we endeavoured to combine professional knowledge with the representation of corporate interests in one and the same body. If either of them is missing in the guiding-organizing activities of networking, efficient work seems impossible. Afterwards there has been a period of many experiments and halts which in fact continues even today although some achievements are already appearing.