The Information Needs of Current Scientific Research

T HE information demands, or information needs, of current scientific research are similar in many respects to the information needs in other forms of scholarship. But this is not true in all cases, and the focus of this paper is on the needs of the research scientists. In discussing the information needs of the scientist, I shall not limit myself to those for which library work is immediately relevant; in fact, a good part of this paper will call attention to the importance of those aspects of scientific communication that take place outside libraries and, indeed, outside literature. (There are, of course, very few aspects of scientific communication to which library work is not at least indirectly relevant.)