The role of international scientific organizations in improving scientific documentation

As a representative of a scientific society which has membership on the US National Committee of the Fédération Internationale de Documentation (FID), I will be concerned primarily here with the problem of international scientific documentation as seen by a physicist-administrator intensely interested in the work of both FID and the American Documentation Institute, and at the same time having close ties with the documentation committees of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and the International Council of Scientific Unions. Because of the very limited time available, I will restrict myself to two aspects of the problem, hoping to obtain your reactions to some thoughts on this subject which have been going through my mind during the past several months.