Domsa Károlyné, Fekete Gézáné, Kovács Mária (szerk.): Gondolatok a könyvtárban / Thoughts in the Library (A MTAK közleményei 30. Budapest, 1992)

KÖNYVTÁR ÉS KORSZERŰSÉG – LIBRARY AND MODERNITY

Comparative research in Europe: the Vienna Centre Main features of the Vienna Centre's activities - 1963-1990 As emphasised before, the Vienna Centre has acquired a special experience in intemational and cross-national cooperation and research in the social sciences in Europe. Since the Centre's creation, more than 700 meetings and almost 200 different research projects, conferences and training seminars have been organised, treating topics from many different fields of social scientific enquiry. Thousands of researchers from hundreds of institutes in Europe and beyond have been brought together by these events. The list of projects hitherto coordinated by the Centre contains more than 70 items. More than 500 scholars from research institutions and universities are cooperating with the Centre. The number of books resulting from the intemational cooperation organised by the Centre will soon reach one hundred. The benefits of these humán and scientific contacts between people from regions separated by geographical and cultural boundaries is important: it represents an exchange of methodology and skills, the experience of different languages, cultures, and values and the groundwork for the development of generál theory and contributions to policy analysis. The Centre's activities can be summarised as follows: — the organisation and coordination of intemational comparative research projects; — the organisation of conferences on topicai themes in the social sciences; — the stitnulation of information and documentation exchange; — the promotion and maintenance of networks between researchers from all parts of Europe; — the training of social scientists in problems of intemational comparative research; — the publication of the results of its work. In recent years the Centre has been active in the following main areas, which constitute the divisions of its programme of research: Technology and Society: Democratic Reform and Socio-Economic Reconstruction in Central and Eastem Europe, the Future of Work, Economic and Technical Cooperation in Europe, New Technologies, Changing Work and Income Opportunities, Public Administration and Information Technology, Youth and New Technologies, Women in Sciences and Technology, Technology in History „ Gondolatok a könyvtárban " 153