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
138 Finally, what was gained by the Geneva experience, beyond the personal and the family advantages of travel and language learning? A multifaceted world provides chances to have a multiplicity of human contacts. Professionally it equips one to understand fully the world of official documents and their environment. It enables one to exercise professionalism and diplomacy together. It equips one to compare various types of daily routine work, sundry approaches and human attitudes. It enables one to polish one's committee technique. All of these can be gains if one wanted them to be. For all its colour the daily work in Geneva was, perhaps, less interesting than my work in the Academy. On home ground one has a feeling of being involved in more important actions than in the U.N. where the final decisions are removed into the fora of multivarious committees. They decide on questions which they do not have the chance to examine in depth. The pyramidal structure gives a certain feeling of security but it discourages initiatives. (An organ does not need to be international for that.) "How to be an international librarian?" By combining the national with the international. It is not an "ubi bene ibi patria" for me but it is — despite the red tape and the cynicism - an international attitude which is a trust in matters becoming better. The basis is the affection and the commitment one feels towards one's own country. I do not believe in the U.N. world citizenship but I do believe that the world is a better place for the U.N. It seems to me that the quality of the world today is, to a large extent, determined by the positive attitudes of its officials. I hoped to do my work in Geneva in this spirit and left the town and the U.N. with a good feeling. NOTES 1. This paper was initially motivated by the 60th anniversary Festschrift planned for 1979. All former directors of the U.N. Library had been asked to send a paper describing their experiences. I sent a 60 pages manuscript for this purpose. Unfortunately, the Festschrift has not yet been published. 2. With the combination of the two major information programmes, UNISIST and NATIS into the General Information Programme (PGI - French abbreviation) the proposed integration was achieved just after two years. 3. Cf. Rózsa, G.: United Nations Library at Geneva: an international research centre. International Library Review. 1976. No. 2. 119-126. p. 4. Sources, organization, utilization of international documentation. Proceedings of the International Symposium... held in Geneva 21-23. August 1972. The Hague, 1974., 586 p. FID Publ. 506. 5. Documents of international organizations. A bibliographical handbook. .. Comp, and ed. by Th. D. Dimitrov. London-Chicago, 1973. American Library Association. 301 p. International University Publications.
