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
95 In addition, several important inter-governmental conferences and meetings are held outside the Palais, e.g. the European Security Conference for which the Library is also open. Counting about 1000 non-official readers, 3000 U.N. officials, about 5-5500 meetings per year in the Palais and the organizations and the meetings outside the Palais which also use the library, all these give a picture of the variety and volume of services provided by the library. Some reference and documentation units serve as transmission centres between the library and the division located in the Palais. The major information tools of the library are traditional. The main catalogue (a cross-catalogue of authors, titles and subjects) is based on the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. For classification the Library of Congress subject headings and the U.D.C. (Universal Decimal Classification) are used. An automation project has been launched with a view to computerization of the catalogue of periodicals. Publications and Activities Outside the Organization The two main publications of the library have been launched in the period of the League of Nations: the Monthly List of Books Catalogued (MLBC) in 1926, \ht Monthly List of Selected Articles (MLS A) in 1927. Together, they contain about 13 000 entries per year. Both have a world-wide diffusion with several hundred subscriptions. The MLSA is published in about 1800 copies and this periodical together with the MLBC serves as the basic exchange of publications material of the library. This activity is a very important one: approximately 76-80 % of the acquisitions of the library are acquired through this channel. The titles of the articles in the MLSA are selected from more than 3000 periodicals. The cumulation of selected chapters of the MLSA has been published in several volumes by the Oceana Publishing Co., New York. For the last two years, the MLBC has contained, in addition to the usual bibliographical details, a descriptive subject-analysis aimed at a future automation programme. Furthermore as a by-product of the MLBC, printed cards are diffused for the benefit of the U.N. depository libraries. For quick information about the new books for the divisions in the Palais, a Daily List is distributed upon request. A Catalogue of Periodicals , annuals and special series currently received in the U.N. Library was published in 1972 (in 454 pages) containing more than 10 000 titles with their subject analysis. It is the most important catalogue of periodicals in the U.N. system. The series of Reference Lists was launched in 1970 based upon the needs of the organization in co-operation with the operational divisions. Several bibliographies and indexes were published (in 1200-2000 copies) such as East-West Trade (No. 1, 80 pages), International Law Commission, a Guide to the Documents, 1949-1969 (No. 2, 55 pages), Science Policy in ECE Countries (No. 4, 68 pages), etc. A special mention should be made for the index containing about 8000 of references to U.N. documents prepared for the Middle East Conference held in Geneva at the end of
