THE MANAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION AND LIBRARY PROVISION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026760 |
| Date | 01 February 1984 |
| Published date | 01 February 1984 |
| Pages | 94-119 |
| Author | STEPHEN A. ROBERTS |
THE MANAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION
AND LIBRARY PROVISION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
STEPHEN A. ROBERTS
School
of
Library and Information
Studies,
Ealing
College
of
Higher
Education,
London
THE BROADER CONTEXT
IN THE LAST twenty years awareness of the information and documentation
problems of the social sciences has grown, but almost as if by stealth. During that
period there have been significant developments for practice, organization and re-
search in social science information, but knowledge of these has remained largely
confined to small groups of specialists closely associated with them. In the main it
has been library and information developments in science and technology that
have captured the interest and attention of the majority of professionals and
specialists as such: for example, the development of computer-based citation in-
dexes;
the introduction of the computer database as a successor to the printed
secondary journal; the development of online search facilities and associated soft-
ware and retrieval techniques; the exploitation of telecommunications and com-
puters to create new information technology, leading to alternative means of
in-
terpersonal communication, the possibilities of electronic journals and
a
vision of
the paperless society. This situation is hardly surprising since science and
technology provide the productive base for advanced societies.
Certain developments in science and technology are believed to have had im-
portant consequences for information, notably those associated with the space and
nuclear programmes. Over the last three decades the awareness of a number of
global problems has grown, stimulated by factors such as the realization of ine-
qualities in levels of economic progress, shortages of primary resources, inflation,
and socio-political changes. Interpretative perspectives on these problems have
tended to be seen in technological terms (alternative energy resources, the green
revolution in agriculture, computers and telecommunications) with the realiza-
tion of social consequences lagging behind. Nevertheless, an appreciation of the
social impact of science and technology has become more prominent in the 1970s,
and it is likely to be a very much more important influence by the end of the cen-
tury. Themes and concerns which have risen to prominence
as
social issues in the
last five years include the nuclear arms race and disarmament, the social and
political consequences of poverty in large areas of the world, ecological deteriora-
tion on a global scale, the disruption of traditional modes of life and livelihood,
alternative technologies and societies, feminism and the women's movement, the
instability of
systems
of economic and financial management, the structural state
of national economies and the world economy, the patterns of political power,
mass unemployment and its consequences, and demographic changes. These
issues should provide stimuli which will be very useful for developing an agenda
on social science information problems and their solution, and for information
policy-making more generally. It is thus likely that the importance of social fac-
tors,
and therefore of the contribution of social science information, will continue
Journal
of
Documentation,
Vol. 40, No.
2,
June 1984, pp. 94-119.
94
June 1984 SOCIAL SCIENCES
to increase significantly over the next decade. Social questions are now being
recognized and formulated which have important consequences for the general
public, for the disciplines and activities of social science, for the individual social
scientist, for those affected by the social sciences, and for the provision and use of
information in the wider domain of
social
science and social problems. The solu-
tions to these problems and answers to these questions will be varied, but all will
involve handling of information in various forms and situations. The time is op-
portune for a review of the capability of the information, documentation and
library sector to cope with challenges far greater than anything it has previously
encountered.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss some implications of
these
questions for
social science information and library services, in terms of their present state and
achievements, and in the light of our knowledge of them. If
a
response
is
to be for-
mulated by the professional and practising communities in information and in the
social sciences, the debate can be conducted best in
a
familiar and operational con-
text: the management and development of information and library services. It
raises immediately the question of the current status of professional efforts, pre-
paredness, and the use of recent findings from research to suggest management
strategies and tactics for the provision of information services, and the attainment
by users of appropriate information handling abilities.
A DEVELOPING SENSE OF PROBLEM
The perception of information activities and problems in the social sciences has
been affected by a tendency to compartmentalize and categorize the structure of
knowledge in disciplinary terms for educational and institutional purposes. The
conventional division of knowledge into the broad areas of
science,
technology,
social science and humanities
is
an old and widely accepted
one;
it
is
after
all
conve-
nient to have these labels for organizational and descriptive purposes, and whereas
they embody much practical reality they are also a source of much error in think-
ing. Science and the humanities as understood today have had
a
long relationship
with each other since classical times, although it has been discontinuous, and its
existence owes as much to modern historiography as to anything
else.
Historians
of
social
science could no doubt find useful ancestry for their own social studies in
the long and shared traditions of the humanities and the natural sciences; in
philosophy and religion alone the two have always been well entangled. The
social sciences often then claim to be the most recent of the fields of distinctive
knowledge. The individualistic aspect of the humanities as a field of study and ac-
tivity (the artist and craftsman; the writer and poet; the philosopher and historian)
has been maintained to the present, and although the humanities have become in-
stitutionalized, the mode of creation and expression is still predominantly in-
dividual. In study, the relationship between scholar and literary text is still the
dominant model.
What
is
more remarkable, especially for its effect on library and information ac-
tivity, is the closer relationship at an educational and institutional level between
the social studies and the sciences. The fact that they are referred to today as the
social
sciences is a
direct consequence of their academic and intellectual development
during the nineteenth century. The study of society developed as an empirical
study on the model of the natural
sciences.
The positivists and the materialists held
it possible to find social laws analogous to the physical laws of science. Thus was
95
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