The first part of this work sets forth some basic points concerning the nature of scientific work and the meaning of knowledge in science, and the patterns of organization and communication characteristic of the scientific world. It considers the ways in which the attributes of science manifest themselves in the social sciences and describes, briefly and generally, the evolution of scientific perspective in social science. The second part describes the forms of publication which comprise scientific literature, and considers their functioning as communication instruments. A sequence is developed from technical reports and journals to review publications and handbooks to textbooks, encyclopedias, and dictionaries as knowledge becomes more accepted. The third part presents bibliographic publications as compressed, abbreviated representations of the literature, in a sequence which parallels that of the discussion of the literature in the second part. A final section considers applications to actual literature searching. Eleven appendices appear throughout the work with reference and bibliographic material. (WH)