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)

I. The socio-professional aspects of the development of the scientific information with special regard to social sciences

SOCIAL SCIENCES INFORMATION: TYPOLOGY OF SOURCES Based on the example of economic research, the author outlines a method which permits the drawing up of a typology of social science information sources.

1 Social sciences like the natural sciences are not homogeneous in character, and like the latter comprise several disciplines and professional activities related to a wide range of study fields. While taking into account some general aspects of the social sciences the heterogeneity of these sciences implies that research in each of the social science disciplines requires its own, specific information. It should be noted that the meaning of the "social sciences" has several interpretations. In general in the non-Marxist terminological framework, social sciences do not include the humanities, while from a Marxist point of view social sciences comprise the humanities such as literature, linguistics as well as history. This article attempts to formulate a common basis that could reflect both interpretations of the social sciences. Such a general basis could be arrived at by tracing and systematizing the sources of information for social science research. The typology developed here is an "information-oriented " one and it could be applied to research in international relations, economics, law, sociology, cultural anthropology, etc. To exemplify the application of this typology I have chosen from the social sciences the field of economics because as a social science branch it is many-faceted, and as a discipline it is as an amalgamation of several branches of knowledge. However, before discussing the typology of economic information sources, a brief comment should be made on economics itself. One of the characteristic features of economics is its closest connection with practice, with theoretical and practical work highly intertwined. Information in the field of economics stems partly from the traditional organizational frameworks of research (universities, research institutes) and from a variety of research sources, e.g. conventional monographs and periodicals on the one hand and a multitude and variety of business reports, market news and analyses, bank reports, statistics, departmental bulletins, all concerned with the daily, practical problems of economic life on the other. If we add to all this the press with its daily and weekly newspapers, an extraordinary variety of economic information sources is further compounded, especially if information from related disciplines such as sociology, economic history, management, etc., are taken into account. The aforementioned variety of economic information sources is very suitable to illustrate our typology. The sources of research in economics may be grouped into two large categories such as "academic" and "non-academic" categories. The former consists of literature which emanates from traditional research and professional organizations while the latter pertain to economic almanacs, market research reports, etc.,