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

57 WGSSI had from the outset sought to maintain informal connections as well and to hold sessions as rarely as possible, offering, however, many opportunities for discussions. This method of working did not prove unsuccessful. WGSSI had interdisciplinary analyses prepared on the state of SSID in individual branches of the social sciences (sociology, economics, literary studies, etc.) and these analyses were put on the agenda of certain sessions involving external experts where they were discussed and then submitted to the competent scientific committee of the Academy asking for its official standpoint on the given matter. It was the assumption - and part of it is still valid - that the coordination of SSID should not come from one particular centre, but each major discipline should have its own base institution within the SSID network. Thus, for instance, in the field of legal and political sciences the Library of Parliament seemed to be the most suitable institution, likewise the Municipal Ervin Szabó Library in sociology, or the National Pedagogical Library in the broad field of education and so forth. The main criterion for designating a base institution were: the professional (scientific) significance of the given collection and the quality and possibilities of its services. The "quasi coordination" of the branch-specific SSID base institutions is carried out by the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, partly as an interdisciplinary institution, partly as a significant document- and servicing-basis taking into account the special libraries of the Academy's research institutes, too (libraries of research institutes for history, sociology, economics etc.). The undertaking of this task on the part of the Academy's Library was and still is justified by the fact that it is representing the Academy and Hungary in two international social science programs. The first program is MISON (International Social Science Information System of the Socialist Academies) and the other is ECSSID (European Cooperation in Social Science Information and Documentation, an East-West program). The bearers of the burdens of development and modernization are the branch-specific SSID base-institutions in Hungary while the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is responsible for the organizational and financial support of these efforts. The branch-specific SSID analyses and generally the conception of WGSSI assumed that the information base-institutes are oriented from the aspect of science policy by the professionally competent research institute or scientific committee of the Academy. This assumption seemed to be feasible as it was to connect research with SSID, but in practice it turned out to be a failure. It could also be said that the bodies or institutes supposed to give the disciplinary scientific orientation were not adequately motivated to fulfil this task. But it also became clear that SSID networking cannot be brought about by mere conceptions, however impressive and convincing they may be. Thus WGSSID finally came to the conclusion that an interest-oriented organizing forceshould be found around which SSID can realistically be organized and filled with real and meaningful content. The introduction of up-to-date information technology in SSID, along with a cooperation based on computerized information processing seemed to be such a realistic content element.