Ways of meeting the computer needs of information work

Abstract

The possibilities of the mechanization of information work is now after some delay being seriously considered in Hungary too. Besides certain types of indexes, publications and library catalogues, all of them procuced on a computer-assisted basis and published by OMKDK (Hungarian Central Technical Library and Documentation Centre), such types of experiments may be met with in other libraries and information centres as well. The computer time, necessary to the mechanization of information processes, however, may only hardly be ensured.
As opposed to several possitilities of the highly developed capitalist countries, computer time may be ensured in two ways in Hungary:
an enterprise hiring out its computer is entrusted to carry out the work;
or the work is done by the institution's own computer.
Following from the distribution of the tasks (i. e. intramural mechanization, edition of publications, information retrieval) and also from the individual needs of the partial tasks, the switch-over to a mechanized system destined to improve information work may be performed in three stages in any one information centre:
establishment of the institution's own data recording unit, preparation and start of the editorial work done for hire through an outside computer;
acquisition of a small computer for the institution's own purposes, to work out experimentally the information retrieval system, and finally to launch the system;
with the volume of data increased, or in the time when eventually a uniform information system could be developed, association with a big computer, mainly for the purposes of information retrieval .
The development is strongly hindered by the fact that - contrary to the majority of information units working within industrial companies - full-time information institutions or centres can only hardly exploit computers even on a hiring basis due to financial reasons and the acquisition of a small computer mentioned as the secend stage seems also to be practically hopeless. Thus these institutions are incretsingly handicapped in the field of mechanization, and it is ever more difficult to make up for this lag, mainly because the adequate preparatory work, the training of specialists for the new tasks (in accordance with the new principles of documentation work, programming the computer working with texts, etc.) cannot be carried out for want of computers, which in turn has a reaction on the development.