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

77 must be pointed out that there is no reliable indication whatever as to the real need of the consumer of information. Certainly this applies to the international organizations as well. 2. The first method, which adopts interviewing and analogue procedures, requires that the degree of use of the potentialities of the information system should be analyzed and so-called "user studies" should be periodically released containing an analysis of the users' opinions. The second method should analyze the subscribers' orders which were assumed to be the main indicator of the actual use of the system's facilities. Even more complex is the analysis of the effectiveness in information work of international organizations, because one should take into consideration their political affiliations as well. In these organizations declarations often substitute the factual measuring of effectiveness. An essential pointer of information work in international organizations is the number of their publications. This is indeed crucial in terms of the spreading and availability of the documents and publications released by them. One should refer to the vast flow of documents of United Nations and its specialized agencies in order to illustrate the significance of the bibliographic recording of documents issued by the international organizations. In addition, the meaning of the word "effectiveness" may also help to elucidate the underlying concept. 3. The primary manifestation of the effectiveness of information work in international organizations is the bibliographic registration of their publications, a provision for a retrospective search. In the field of sciences and technology it is possible to measure or qualify the effectiveness of information, since the results of research in these sciences are tangible as the new products of science and technology promote the application and utilization of knowledge. In the domain of social sciences, on the other hand, the end-product of research defies any attempt at a clear-cut definition. Although this is familiar enough, it is still worth reiterating in this context. In social science information — and this also holds true for the international organizations — one could speak of trends rather than of quantification of results. This by no means implies that the methods of quantification should be left unchanged. On the contrary, current research may bring further clarification. International science could certainly profit from a bibliographical service which is based on national literatures that yield national publications. Added to them the service can also use the best known international publications. The service can utilize the information of special literature of each country within an international framework. This already exists in terms of the series called "international bibliographies of.

.." published under the aegis of UNESCO, or the serial publications issued by the International Committee for Social Science Information and Documentation. So in international series and serials the distribution of special literature of different countries is identifiable. 4. Quantitative methods can help research in exploring the trends of growth in effectiveness partly to raise the standards of information services, partly to determine the most expedient channels for furthering information to users on a reasonably profitable basis. The access to primary documents is the main prerequisite of this profitability. To be sure, nothing can substitute for the primary documents (books, journals,