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

LIBRARIES AND INFORMATION UNITS IN A BIBLIOLOG1CAL CONTEXT* 1. As a cultural establishment the library — that is to say the great library devoted to the arts and sciences - is a certain manifestation of bibliology in so far as we use this concept to mean the synthesis of information connected with writing. There is no framework of written intellectual products measuring up to the scientific library, which contains the knowledge about everything that is connected with the written form. Such information is integrated best by the library, consequently it in itself is a topic of bibliological research, partly because it plays a role in research and development which has economic connections and significance. It is, therefore, fair to say, that bibliological research - as a synthesis of studies connected with writing - is a carrier of significant information related to cultural history. The various trends that deal with writings in libraries may be regarded as historically settled. But that already begs the question: what are the qualitative connections of the art of writing with collections of learning? The answer is manifold and parts are provided by various disciplines like: library history, the history of the book, the concept and methodology of scientific information, the history of the press and of publishing, the science of communication etc. Bibliology might aspire to connect these disciplines without taking on any of their scientific mantles. Progress in this field is thwarted because libraries are mainly concerned with the expediencies of procedural and organisational problems not to mention the questions of installing new technology of material and personnel difficulties of trying to overcome the resistance against new technology and other similar matters. Furthermore, we may also remember Marx's thought about learning, who opined that learning — the product of intellectual work — was always undervalued because the time for reproduction was not commensurate with the time that had been needed for the original production. For example, a schoolboy might learn a mathematical thesis within the hour. Apart from their daily work librarians might profit more from doing research in another field of science or learning since that has a better standing. In libraries of humanities and social sciences the general attitudes set the tasks: cataloguing mss and old books, undertaking historical bibliography. But the extensive document production in the second half of this century made the introduction of new communication technology indispensable. These are either introduced in libraries of learning (this is mostly the case) or there is a reliance of independent information establishments. As a result, different views were formed in respect of the treatment of written documents. * This is an augmented text of the paper given to the French-Hungarian Bibliological Colloquium given in the Hungarian Institute, Paris, March 1987.