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

92 a research centre, has remained the special feature of the institution. The library policy was formulated by a special committee of the League of Nations comprising political figures, researchers and librarians under the chairmanship of the international jurist Vittorio Scialoja. Since then growth of the library has never stopped. Even during the Second World War in spite of budgetary, staff and other difficulties, it was possible to maintain its collections, although on a limited scale. After the war and in 1946 when the library was taken over by United Nations, it was even then able to provide considerable research facilities. It is easy to understand the significance of these facilities for governments, for the newly established international organizations and for scholars in ruined Europe. The main strength of the library activities has always been its close links with the parent organization (League of Nations then United Nations) and the governments, the principal suppliers of its collections and their most important users. This homogeneous and multi-faceted process is illustrated below: Official documents and publications United Nations (League of Nations) U.N. system Governmental bodies International organizations, IGOs, NGOs Academic publications Special literature, books, journals, research INPUT U.N. Library at Geneva Official bodies United Nations (League of Nations) U.N. system Governmental bodies »OUTPUT services International organizations, IGOs, NGOs • Academic bodies and individual researchers Thirty-five Kilometres of Shelves The number of volumes bound is about 800 000. Current serial titles received are about 10 000. The number of documents can be counted in millions. The real estimate of the size of the collections of the Library is the volume of its shelves. It is of an order of about 35 km (10 floors of iron stacks and the shelves in the reading rooms). The increase of the holdings per year is approximately 13 000—15 000 volumes. The most important collections are the following. United Nations and League of Nations publications and documents These are the most comprehensive collections in the world including all documents in all official languages of the Organization, also comprising several thousand microfiches.