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Needs and opportunities for European cooperation in the field of social science information and documentation
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lnfommtron Procerrrng & Managemen Vol 14. pp 141-143 0 Pergamon Press Ltd 1918 Pnnted m Great Bntun
00/o
NEEDS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR EUROPEAN COOPERATION IN THE FIELD OF SOCIAL SCIENCE INFORMATION AND DOCUMENTATION JEAN MEYRIAT International Committee for Social Science Information and Documentation This paper is not a national report. The writer participates in the Moscow conference not as a national representative but as Secretary General of the International Committee for Social Science Information and Documentation. For this reason he will only express some views and make some proposals referring to Sections IX and X of the agreed scheme for the reports. These views are presented under the responsibility of the writer and do not intend to express the official opinion of this International Committee. Indeed the eminent members of this Committee, one of whom is Professor Vinogradov, convener of the Moscow conference, had not the opportunity to discuss the various points developed thereafter. But for many years they accumulated a great deal of common experience concerning these problems and the present comments are drawn from this experience.
IX NEEDSFOR ANDOBSTACLESTOEUROPEANCOOPERATION (I)in many European countries there exists presently a very limited amount of coordination. On the contrary we can see a great number of unconnected services, in most of the cases of a limited size, without a very precise definition of their public and goals. This situation is detrimental to the efficiency of the services and makes very difficult the necessary economies of scale. It is an obstacle to cooperation with foreign partners which cannot easily see which is their better counterpart. It would be necessary to help setting up in each country the elements of a national system for social science information and documentation, even if informally constituted, which would act as a switching point for international cooperation. (2) Another difficulty is created by the great diversity of viewpoints and conceptions. This diversity is apparent even in the notion of “Social sciences”, in the terminology used to describe and analyse the social phenomena, etc. It may be an element of mutual profit. but it is first necessary to make efforts toward understanding each other. This implies that a vigorous emphasis is put on all kinds of terminology and conceptual work which should be developed in the wider European framwork by multinational teams. (3) A worldwide difficulty for scientific communication is the diversity of languages; it is especially acute in the European area. So a great deal of attention must be paid to all problems of translation and linguistic equivalences. Some common procedure may be agreed on for helping foreign workers to make use of primary documents published in any national language, for instance by accompanying these with r&urn& or subtitles in other languages. It may be necessary to conventionally use one common language well suited for the transfer of information, and English would be a natural candidate for this function. But this solution creates many other difficulties, and the present writer is particularly sensitive to the inconvenience of being obliged of oversimplifying his thought by putting it in a foreign dress. (4) European cooperation must also take account of the well known softness of the social sciences which creates institutional as well as scientific difficulties. Social scientists are not always accepted as true scientists; they are in an ambiguous situation in front of social and political forces and powers which either are reluctant to give them the necessary means for their work or are suspected to manipulate them. For this reason, it is especially important for social scientists to group themselves in national associations or institutions strong enough to insure them respectability and intellectual independence. Internal and external exchange of information is a natural basis for such groupings, These are prerequisites for international IPM Vol
14 No 314-B
141
142
JEANMEYRIAT
cooperation, at the same time they may be greatly helped by their connection with foreign homologous groupings. (5) Two present trends have to be carefully examined. One is a kind of parochialism, each institution tending to think and act with reference only to national needs and habits. On the other hand a series of privileged bilateral links have been established by many European serivces with powerful partners located in the most developed countries, especially in the U.S.A., creating a kind of conceptual and technical dependence. It will be very important for any scheme for inter-European cooperation to take into account at the same time these internal subsystems and these bilateral connections in order to ensure with both the necessary amount of complementarity and compatibility. X. PRIVILEGED
AREAS
FOR EUROPEAN
COOPERATION
(1) There is a clear need to further develop the exchange of information about informative products and services which this conference has given the opportunity to begin. This can be made by the way of direct contacts between the main active institutions and the national groups in each country. It can also benefit from some amount of multilateral institutionalization. It can make profit of the opportunites offered by the activities of the ICSSD, and namely of two current programs: constitution of a data base on social science periodicals, permanently updating the fourth edition of the World list of social science periodicals; and the World Inventory of information services in the social sciences, covering data services as well as documentary services. (2) This exchange of information could be extended to cover on-going projects utilizing social science information in each country. An early diffusion of such information may help the boradening of some projects to a bilateral or even multilateral scale. It may at least ensure a better compatibility of national efforts with those of the other European countries. (3) Bibliographical information has been up to now the field best covered, and various means of international diffusion already exist. They have to be developed. For the social sciences a priority seems to be the better coverage of grey literature by national bibliographical services. However this endeavour should not induce rhe creation of a lot of new bibliographical publications. It would be more advisable to use the existing channels for publication and especially the various volumes of the International bibliography of the social sciences. This is readily opened to extensions and adjustments; when it reaches the era of mechanization it will be easy to conceive the extraction of subsets particularly suited to the information needs of such regions as Europe. Studies have to be made on the desirability of completing this international bibliography either with national ones (like the Bibliografia italiana delle scienze sociali) or with sectorial ones, in the same way as is done by American institutions (Psychological
Absrracts, American Political Science Documents).
More recently the need has been felt to establish specific relations between the institutions which provide automated bibliographical information, which would benefit by sharing their experiences as utilizers of the big American data bases and which need to cooperate if they want to develop European bases. (4) Attention has to be given, especially in Europe, to the whole problem of social science data. In this field it seems wise to rely on the “International federation of data organizations for the social sciences”, which is due to be established in May 1977, and to cooperate as far as possible with this specialized group. All the most active European services will be members of it and a great part of its activity will be oriented towards Europe. (5) Current social science research constitutes a third field in which early dissemination of information would be of great scientific and practical interest. One could begin here with a detailed inventory of the resources and possibilities existing in each country as well as within some European organizations like the Council of Europe. One target could be to extend within Europe to the social sciences the work already begun in the hard sciences as exemplified by the “UNISIST international symposium on information systems and services in ongoing research in science”, organized in October 1975 (Proceedings published by the Hungarian Central Technical Library and Documentation Center, Budapest, 1976). (6) Last but not least it is porposed to try to jointly develop technical tools necessary for documentary work and suited for European needs, especially:
Needs and opportunities for European cooperation in the field of social
science
143
-Standardized rules for bibliographic and documentary descriptions, facilitating the exchange of references across linguistic barriers; -Rules for the conversion of the systems of writing, which are expecially needed in a continent in which people use so great a number of different alphabets; -Multilingual thesauri which would allow for retrieving information from the different data bases to be originated in various parts of Europe. To help attain these goals and others the Conference may propose the ICSSD is ready to put at the disposal of the European social science community its experience and its technical and human resources.
lnfommtron Procerrrng & Managemen Vol 14. pp 141-143 0 Pergamon Press Ltd 1918 Pnnted m Great Bntun
00/o
NEEDS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR EUROPEAN COOPERATION IN THE FIELD OF SOCIAL SCIENCE INFORMATION AND DOCUMENTATION JEAN MEYRIAT International Committee for Social Science Information and Documentation This paper is not a national report. The writer participates in the Moscow conference not as a national representative but as Secretary General of the International Committee for Social Science Information and Documentation. For this reason he will only express some views and make some proposals referring to Sections IX and X of the agreed scheme for the reports. These views are presented under the responsibility of the writer and do not intend to express the official opinion of this International Committee. Indeed the eminent members of this Committee, one of whom is Professor Vinogradov, convener of the Moscow conference, had not the opportunity to discuss the various points developed thereafter. But for many years they accumulated a great deal of common experience concerning these problems and the present comments are drawn from this experience.
IX NEEDSFOR ANDOBSTACLESTOEUROPEANCOOPERATION (I)in many European countries there exists presently a very limited amount of coordination. On the contrary we can see a great number of unconnected services, in most of the cases of a limited size, without a very precise definition of their public and goals. This situation is detrimental to the efficiency of the services and makes very difficult the necessary economies of scale. It is an obstacle to cooperation with foreign partners which cannot easily see which is their better counterpart. It would be necessary to help setting up in each country the elements of a national system for social science information and documentation, even if informally constituted, which would act as a switching point for international cooperation. (2) Another difficulty is created by the great diversity of viewpoints and conceptions. This diversity is apparent even in the notion of “Social sciences”, in the terminology used to describe and analyse the social phenomena, etc. It may be an element of mutual profit. but it is first necessary to make efforts toward understanding each other. This implies that a vigorous emphasis is put on all kinds of terminology and conceptual work which should be developed in the wider European framwork by multinational teams. (3) A worldwide difficulty for scientific communication is the diversity of languages; it is especially acute in the European area. So a great deal of attention must be paid to all problems of translation and linguistic equivalences. Some common procedure may be agreed on for helping foreign workers to make use of primary documents published in any national language, for instance by accompanying these with r&urn& or subtitles in other languages. It may be necessary to conventionally use one common language well suited for the transfer of information, and English would be a natural candidate for this function. But this solution creates many other difficulties, and the present writer is particularly sensitive to the inconvenience of being obliged of oversimplifying his thought by putting it in a foreign dress. (4) European cooperation must also take account of the well known softness of the social sciences which creates institutional as well as scientific difficulties. Social scientists are not always accepted as true scientists; they are in an ambiguous situation in front of social and political forces and powers which either are reluctant to give them the necessary means for their work or are suspected to manipulate them. For this reason, it is especially important for social scientists to group themselves in national associations or institutions strong enough to insure them respectability and intellectual independence. Internal and external exchange of information is a natural basis for such groupings, These are prerequisites for international IPM Vol
14 No 314-B
141
142
JEANMEYRIAT
cooperation, at the same time they may be greatly helped by their connection with foreign homologous groupings. (5) Two present trends have to be carefully examined. One is a kind of parochialism, each institution tending to think and act with reference only to national needs and habits. On the other hand a series of privileged bilateral links have been established by many European serivces with powerful partners located in the most developed countries, especially in the U.S.A., creating a kind of conceptual and technical dependence. It will be very important for any scheme for inter-European cooperation to take into account at the same time these internal subsystems and these bilateral connections in order to ensure with both the necessary amount of complementarity and compatibility. X. PRIVILEGED
AREAS
FOR EUROPEAN
COOPERATION
(1) There is a clear need to further develop the exchange of information about informative products and services which this conference has given the opportunity to begin. This can be made by the way of direct contacts between the main active institutions and the national groups in each country. It can also benefit from some amount of multilateral institutionalization. It can make profit of the opportunites offered by the activities of the ICSSD, and namely of two current programs: constitution of a data base on social science periodicals, permanently updating the fourth edition of the World list of social science periodicals; and the World Inventory of information services in the social sciences, covering data services as well as documentary services. (2) This exchange of information could be extended to cover on-going projects utilizing social science information in each country. An early diffusion of such information may help the boradening of some projects to a bilateral or even multilateral scale. It may at least ensure a better compatibility of national efforts with those of the other European countries. (3) Bibliographical information has been up to now the field best covered, and various means of international diffusion already exist. They have to be developed. For the social sciences a priority seems to be the better coverage of grey literature by national bibliographical services. However this endeavour should not induce rhe creation of a lot of new bibliographical publications. It would be more advisable to use the existing channels for publication and especially the various volumes of the International bibliography of the social sciences. This is readily opened to extensions and adjustments; when it reaches the era of mechanization it will be easy to conceive the extraction of subsets particularly suited to the information needs of such regions as Europe. Studies have to be made on the desirability of completing this international bibliography either with national ones (like the Bibliografia italiana delle scienze sociali) or with sectorial ones, in the same way as is done by American institutions (Psychological
Absrracts, American Political Science Documents).
More recently the need has been felt to establish specific relations between the institutions which provide automated bibliographical information, which would benefit by sharing their experiences as utilizers of the big American data bases and which need to cooperate if they want to develop European bases. (4) Attention has to be given, especially in Europe, to the whole problem of social science data. In this field it seems wise to rely on the “International federation of data organizations for the social sciences”, which is due to be established in May 1977, and to cooperate as far as possible with this specialized group. All the most active European services will be members of it and a great part of its activity will be oriented towards Europe. (5) Current social science research constitutes a third field in which early dissemination of information would be of great scientific and practical interest. One could begin here with a detailed inventory of the resources and possibilities existing in each country as well as within some European organizations like the Council of Europe. One target could be to extend within Europe to the social sciences the work already begun in the hard sciences as exemplified by the “UNISIST international symposium on information systems and services in ongoing research in science”, organized in October 1975 (Proceedings published by the Hungarian Central Technical Library and Documentation Center, Budapest, 1976). (6) Last but not least it is porposed to try to jointly develop technical tools necessary for documentary work and suited for European needs, especially:
Needs and opportunities for European cooperation in the field of social
science
143
-Standardized rules for bibliographic and documentary descriptions, facilitating the exchange of references across linguistic barriers; -Rules for the conversion of the systems of writing, which are expecially needed in a continent in which people use so great a number of different alphabets; -Multilingual thesauri which would allow for retrieving information from the different data bases to be originated in various parts of Europe. To help attain these goals and others the Conference may propose the ICSSD is ready to put at the disposal of the European social science community its experience and its technical and human resources.