The relationship of natural and social sciences to social problems and the contribution of the information scientist to their solutions

Social problems have multiple causes, and their solutions accordingly require a multidiscipline approach, which is facilitated by the fact that technology, the natural sciences, and the social sciences are closely interrelated (a point of view that is making itself increasingly felt in educational theory). The deterioration of the inner city is an example of a typical complex social problem that will yield only before such a unified attack. Solutions to social problems have been suggested by findings from such varied fields as astrophysics, sensory psychophysics, and population studies, as well as the more theoretical social sciences, whose influence can be seen in their application to problems of urban development. Although information specialists have hardly yet developed a full‐fledged body of knowledge, they can contribute much towards the solving of social problems by: (1) organizing and disseminating information to those broad‐gauged individuals and groups that are working on problems that defy solution by a fragmented approach; (2) controlling the rapidly mushrooming body of pertinent technical literature; (3) developing periodical indexes for the field of social welfare; and (4) assisting in the compilation of state‐of‐the‐art papers on social problems, basing their work on a value‐oriented extracting technique derived from a model created by the National Association of Social Workers.