The growth of knowledge and the importance and benefits of scientific information supply. [Paper presented at the IRRD Information and Documentation Seminar, Prague, 2-4 July 1997].

Up to late medieval times growth of science was limited and knowledge transfer oral or handwritten. The manufacturing of paper and the invention of printing and its further mechanisation enabled the explosive growth of scientific information from the Renaissance onward. In its turn it enabled by mechanisation and industrialisation economic growth and reciprocally cultural prosperity and social affluence. The growth of scientific information is characterised by evolutionary self-organisation, but the -now classic- information chain of printed matter has not changed until recently. Now communication and information technology will further advance its evolution. No reliable predictions can be made about what will change, where, when or how rapidly. However, the direction is predictable from the course of evolutionary self-organisation. Since economics always has determined its course it is to expect that research institutions as producers of valuable knowledge will become trade centres of scientific information on a worldwide electronic network. (Author/publisher