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
81 similarly to combining information needs derived from R+D with the market possibilities of the economic units. In other words: information planning ought to be combined with marketing. In advanced capitalist societies governmental trends and economic programmes are atune to the possibilities of supplying needs and to the independence of firms (USA, W. Germany). A policy of information should be aimed at increasing the dividends of a trade related information. What is considered "useful" information cannot be decided by the supplier only by the user. But how can the user express whether anything proved useful to him? By buying or paying a subscription to the information. When information is not paid for it was possibly not useful in a trade related field. There is, however, another domain of information where "trade-relatedness" is not a requirement yet information should be supplied because it serves national culture. All countries which care for their own culture promote such information. Economic usefulness is not a criterion in the humanities. Linguistic periodicals, for instance, should be getting grants, so should history, archaeology and others. They are the depositories of information that relate to national culture and form a heritage of identity. Such information is financially aided by the state partly in its own interest and partly for the sake of human resources. Information as a source of profit is incidental in such cases. I would like to put forward the hypothesis that the more advanced is the economy the larger is the trade related information dividend. In Hungarian economics it is not enough an accepted fact — as yet - that information is a commodity ; in other words it is part of the production of goods which has to be paid for like implements or natural resources. A good many of our firms are neither able to innovate nor update their technological equipment why should they be willing to pay for information? This is the chief limitation of a policy of information. Currently the National Technological Committee has to deal with questions relating to information policy which means that this is not in the sphere of the cultural body which is the superorgan of libraries neither is the general policy related to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, nor, for that matter, to the Governmental Committee of Scientific Policy. In other words there is no specialized unit nominated by the state which should look after information policy, either on macro or on micro level. Let us call a halt in asking questions. Nonetheless we cannot forget about the united cause of libraries the promotion of which raises doubts not to mention the fictitious unity of public libraries and information units. As a complex these are limiting factors in the context of existing legislation. One could think of alternatives in taking the next steps. I don't wish to make a dogma of legalistic or structural initiatives but these always reflect a general viewpoint which always expresses existing interests. But to return to one of the initial questions: how could one substitute information policies with one general policy? In trying to give an answer I have endeavoured to put forward some ideas and rephrase the question. In: TMT, 1987.8. 363-366. p.
