Abstract
THE debate in the House of Commons last week on the Ministry of Information was announced too late for account to be taken of it in the leading article on the suggested Directorate of Scientific Information in NATURE of October 14, but there appears to have been nothing said which invalidates the comments in that article; indeed, the debate rather served to emphasize the importance of the principal points. Replying on behalf of the Government, Sir Samuel Hoare admitted that the public had lost confidence in the Ministry, and outlined the steps taken for its reorganization. Two factors have no doubt contributed largely to the difficulties of the Ministry, namely, confusion between the task of collecting information and of disseminating it, and the failure to utilize effectively organizations already in existence. The first has involved the Ministry in the difficult question of censorship and authority in relation to other Departments of State; the second has been responsible for excesses of expenditure and lapses of judgment for which the Ministry has been rightly criticized. It is not always realized that the collection of information in itself is a specialized activity. In the technical and scientific sense it is the task of the numerous information bureaux or departments, such as various Imperial Agricultural Bureaux, those associated with different research and other associations or with individual industrial firms. Activities of this kind are to be found over the whole range of industry and science, including the social sciences. To some extent the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux serves as a clearing house in this field, and its services have already been offered to the Government. Official recognition of the vital necessity of information services and their co-ordination does not as yet appear to have been forthcoming, nor has their utilization by Government Departments and other organizations concerned with national service been encouraged, a situation which would scarcely have arisen had the Ministry been provided with adequate scientific guidance.
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Ministry of Information. Nature 144, 700–701 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144700c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144700c0