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

58 6. Computer-based SSID Owing to the economic circumstances and the level of technological development in Hungary, it seems to be rather feasible to create machine-based literature processing and data bases in the form of cooperation. Machine-based data processing which started relatively late, generally meant a lack of experts as well. This particularly applied to the processing of printed information (literature), and within this mainly to SSID. Therefore, the initiative of WGSSI - namely that after several experiments, plans, conceptions, SSID and the organization of related networking should all be based on computerized literature processing - was received favourably by the institutions concerned. To achieve this end, (with respect to the scattered and uneven state of financial and technological means and experiences) the tasks to be performed had to be summed up in a sound conception which could take into consideration the real needs of scientific and economic life. With this, WGSSI wanted to avoid, as much as possible, the appearance of incidental and random developmental tendencies. Therefore, utilizing the experiences gained by various libraries so far (e.g. Library of the Parliament, Library of the Central Statistical Office and so on), and analyzing both the real demands on machine-produced information and its possibilities, WGSSI prepared a skeleton-program of SSID development for SSCC. After several discussions this higher science policy body accepted the WGSSI's skeleton-project, along with its financial consequences. It was obvious for all that any conception without adequate financial means is nothing but an illusory objective. The government's Committee on Science Policy allotted an amount to WGSSI, which sum, compared to the country's financial position was not insignificant to perform the given tasks. The Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was entrusted with the handling of it. The accepted conception established that the computer-based SSID should be started in a few priorized fields. These fields were marked out by WGSSI on the basis of scientific and economic considerations and of the SSID work done so far. They are: economics (including statistics), sociology, legal and administrative science, and, at a later date, pedagogy. (Here I note that in the field of science policy and research organization some computer-assisted scientometric researches are going on within the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.) About half of the allotted sum was spent by WGSSI on data recording machines to be run by the base-institutions of the three fields mentioned. From the remainder, the costs of intellectual works necessary to computerized SSID and to its input were covered by WGSSI. Thus, among others, branch-specific and network systems planning costs, costs of document analyses, bridging linguistic gaps (translations) and the like are covered. The work described above is still going on. It has proved true that with the institutional-disciplinary interests given concrete form, the interest in cooperation and networking has increased. Instead of declaration and incitements institutions were given financial and related professional support and these two have had a favourable joint effect on their "frame of mind". Computerized SSID in Hungary is only taking its first steps in most fields, nevertheless it has embarked on a road that proves to be practicable. This is not to mean that all difficulties in SSID