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)

Foreword by Prof. Béla Köpeczi, Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

FOREWORD The studies in this volume were written by a Hungarian librarian who differs from the rest at least in two respects. He has vital international experience which equips him to deal with the common and the variable features of his topic. Moreover, he is a librarian who is deeply concerned with the flow and the use of information, one of the main problems of our time. Being a researcher our librarian has a firm footing in each field: research and librarianship. It is common knowledge that the quantity of information has increased but there is dissatisfaction in determining the use and the modes of supply. Quantitative growth enables us to extend the circle of information but it contains a warning about the necessity of selection. Registering is already difficult but it is even harder to determine the criteria of selection not to mention scientific value and social usefulness. Our judgement should be based on a knowledge of the present position, an understanding of current economic tendencies, social movement and scientific formations. In other words our choice should look at both the present and the future. For all those reasons the supplier of information is not just a documentalist, but also a researcher. One of the author's main point is that there is a need for an information policy capable of governing and organising the economy of information. This policy should be based on the existing institutional structure and the technical expertise together with their future possibilities. Hypotheses and research results are generally born in situations where there is a certain autonomy of research and where scientific trends and economic needs clearly express themselves. An information policy should be sensitive to trends, in other words to needs that emerge from the practical fusion of science/knowledge and practice. The trends of international developments are differently gauged by the various research bases and units of various countries but ongoing experience enable one to make comparisons among multiple development trends and this facilitates selection. In order to formulate a national science policy it is indispensable that the policy maker should be in the possession of general and comparative information. The same is true for the practitioners of individual disciplines. The author rightly states that information centres and large libraries fulfill a research function too since the information provided enables the practitioner of a branch of science to measure its own level of development and these, in toto, enable the policy makers to be informed of the scientific capacity and its usability as it relates to the whole country. Furthermore all this gives an indication to mark further research trends and priorities. Information-economy is particularly important for a small nation which cannot create optimal circumstances for scientific development in every branch of science so it must be informed what are the trends in more developed countries.