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)
II. International relations in the field of scientific information
UNITED NATIONS LIBRARY AT GENEVA: AN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS RESEARCH CENTRE The Main Characteristics of the Library The United Nations Library at Geneva occupies a very particular place in the U.N.family of libraries and documentation centers. This is due to its historical character (it was founded with the League of Nations in 1919); to the richness and the variety of its holdings (it is at thç same time a library, an archive collection and a museum); to the diversity of its functions, due to the wide variety of organizations and individuals served; to the amalgamation of its official and academic tasks (it is the depository institution of the complete sets of the League of Nations and U.N. documents and of important collections of academic publications); to its size (it is the largest library of the U.N. system and one of the most important on a world-wide scale in international affairs); to its special function in relation to Swiss libraries in particular and European libraries in general (for these geographic areas it is the basic library for international organization documents); to its role of a reference-centre for international meetings (Geneva is the largest centre of IGO's and intergovernmental meetings - beside the U.N. meetings, the European security conference, the SALT, the Middle East Conference, etc.); to the very close links with its principal users (the parent organization and member governments are its main suppliers of documents and at the same time the main users of its services. This, however, is a general characteristic of the IGO libraries). To some extent the Library with its collections and functions reflects continuity and change in world affairs in a special way. The events and the history of the last half century are condensed in its collections. The Background of the Library The Library was set up in London (at Picadilly) in 1919 with the League of Nations. It was transferred with the Secretariat of the League of Nations to Geneva in 1920. The first headquarters of the League of Nations was in the Hotel National until 1936 when it was removed to the Palais des Nations where the Library occupied its own wing. In 1927, the League of Nations was offered a grant of S 2 000 000 by John D. Rockefeller Jr for a library building and endowment fund with the aim of the Library "serving as a center of international research and an instrument of international understanding". The dual aspect of the library, on the one hand, to act as a secretariat library (including services for conferences, delegates, journalists), on the other hand, to act as
