DOCUMENTATION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES SOME PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS Available to Purchase

I IT is unnecessary to stress either the importance in the troubled world of to‐day of the easy circulation of information in the field of the social sciences, or the inadequacy as they exist at present of the documentational services (including bibliographies and abstracts) which are needed to facilitate it. Since it is scarcely possible for these services to be provided adequately except by wide international co‐operation, their improvement cannot be undertaken except by equally wide agreement, which must in turn be based on full discussion and on a more exact and comprehensive knowledge of the situation than is easily available at present. It is good news that Unesco, the progress of whose work on the documentational questions of the natural sciences is recorded in the previous paper, is also to turn its attention to those of the social sciences; it can provide the impulse, the centre, and the machinery for the work of investigation and discussion which must necessarily fall on those immediately concerned as producers, intermediaries, or consumers—that is, on bibliographers, librarians, and social scientists. These notes do no more than suggest some lines on which investigation and discussion will be particularly necessary, and some dangers which should be avoided.