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)
III. „The elephant’s head” and integrated information infrastructure for developing countries
153 The "broader approach which takes into account the social reality" in the field of information means the reconsideration of the existing international information assistance and systems for development (how to provide information) on the one hand, and a search for new ways and means, and methods for the infrastructure of information (how to assimilate, how to apply) in developing countries, on the other. One may agree with Myrdal in his statement that "Development must be understood as the movement upward of the entire social system, where there is a circular causation between conditions and changes with cumulative effects." and "... Reforms must be directed upward moving the system upward as much and as rapidly as possible by inducing changes planned with this result in mind." Information as an integral part of development activities should be considered as a facet of the "circular causation", and as a catalyzing factor of the "cumulative effects". An integrated approach to the problems of information policy for development by the United Nations system can be one of the important steps toward the realization of "cumulative effects" to the benefit of developing countries. There may be different approaches to the typology of information systems. The first task, however, is to define what is to be meant by the term "information", and how this notion is interpreted in this study. Criteria and categorization of the UN information functions The word "information" used in the sense of scientific information has two meanings. First it means an activity. This is an organized process of transmission, or transfer of secondary information. Second, it denotes the result of this process, embodied in an intellectual product. The Directory of United Nations data bases and information systems surveys 615 UN information systems. 1 6 In fact, the number of information programmes, systems and services depends on the starting-point of such a survey; thus their number may be higher or lower. In the following brief survey, mention will be made only of the major international information systems, programmes and services of the United Nations family which are concerned with information for development. 1 7 AGRIS/FAO: International information system for the agricultural sciII. The typology of the UN information systems CORE/IOB: CARIS/FAO: DARE/UNESCO: ences and technology Current Agricultural Research Information System — on on-going researches Common Register on Development Activities — on on-going projects Data retrieval system for documentation in the social and human sciences
