Domsa Károlyné, Fekete Gézáné, Kovács Mária (szerk.): Gondolatok a könyvtárban / Thoughts in the Library (A MTAK közleményei 30. Budapest, 1992)
KÖNYVTÁR ÉS KORSZERŰSÉG – LIBRARY AND MODERNITY
A.F. Marks International social science research and research information needs Internationalisation of science and its institutional arrangements is reinforced by the growing awareness of increasing international interdependence. This awareness is enhanced by a multitude of problems of a transborder nature which should preferably be solved by making use of local expertise and by cooperation in research. This applies, I would think, to all scientific disciplines. For the social sciences, however, there is an additional methodological reason for international or intercultural research cooperation. Knowledge, gained from empirical social science research, has a preponderantly local and temporal validity. Such knowledge cannot be simply generalized beyond the case, incorporated into a more general body of knowledge and raised to a higher level of theoretical abstraction. As a matter of fact, social scientific concepts and theories can only be constructed through comparison of similar phenomena in other places and periods and by abstraction of the core elements. Without comparison and abstraction social knowledge will remain "ethnocentric" knowledge with little relevance to social scientific theory. Consequently, comparative research is a fundamental method of the social sciences. These cannot be developed without knowledge of other societies or cultures. In order to obtain knowledge about other societies, cooperation between researchers from different cultural backgrounds is recommended. Cooperation in social science research implies comparison of definitions. The insider's perception of a certain phenomenon with its ramifications is most informative. However, outsiders may put it in a different perspective. Their dialogue may result in a more widely applicable concept and contribute to social science theory. Such dialogue requires openmindedness, the conscious effort to be as unbiased in one's views as possible and good rapport. In short, cooperative and comparative European social science research is indispensable to the development of the social sciences and their effective application in decision making. Such research is, of course, not without problems and quite a few problems have to do with information and communication. Jan Berting has distinguished two main phases of international cooperative and comparative social science research: the preparatory phase and the research design phase. 1 One may add to these a third phase, i.e. the phase of the actual fieldwork. In different phases of the research process different information is needed. In the preparatory phase much information is needed to make the research problem more explicit. Berting says, sometimes the needed information is abundantly available 174 „ Thoughts in the library "
