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

66 accumulation in economy: this is the most important result of previous work but it exists in current work itself. This "principal accumulation", that of production experiences, — knowledge systematized into science in the 18th century — is being summed up and forwarded through and by the "collective memory" of mankind - scientific literature. This principal social function of scientific literature reflects the process of science becoming a productive force and is also one of the most essential parts of this process. Both sides of this process assume their final shape in the scientific and technical revolution unfolding in our age and this in tum by that of the sciences. Hence it follows that in the last analysis the material production of society is the technological application of sciences. The role of knowledge ("competence" of society) and its application in the development of the forces in production have evolved in three major historical stages, within which the transformation of scientific writings into specialized scientific literature takes place along with the increase of scientific literature, the appearance of scientific information and their concomitant problems. In the first period, that is, up to the industrial revolution, we cannot talk about the social utilization of science as it is understood today. The organized conscious and wide-scale application of science were not yet possible owing to the relatively underdeveloped state of the productive forces. Science was studied individually, on a small scale, and the chief collective form of communications was the book. Verbal communication and correspondence (invisible college) were also of significance, but that of periodical publications was scarce. Scientists working without reference to one another were able to master the existing knowledge in their field, but this "collective memory" was not disseminated beyond the walls of libraries. The second period, lasting from the Industrial Revolution to the beginning of the scientific and technical revolution unfolding today, is, in fact, the first stage of an organized and conscious application on a social scale of science as a productive force. Sciences become specialised, new disciplines are bom. Owing to the tremendous development of the forces of production, the isolated, individual scientific work is being replaced by scientific work on a large and wide scale. As formulated by the Communist Manifesto: The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-sidedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous local literatures, there arises a world literature. Beside the book, the journal gradually becomes the primary source of scientific communication. A direct survey of existing knowledge in a discipline by any single individual becomes impossible, a mediator therefore develops between scientific "world literature" and research - it is first the bibliography, then the documentation. The third - that is the present - period is characterized by the scientific and technical revolution. Both science and its assessment become direct productive forces. According to estimates, the number of scientists in this last period amounts to 90 % of the total number of all the scientists having lived up till now. It follows that the organisation of work should be more in compliance with this number. Big research institutes