STUDIES
National Library Platform: renewal of central services and information technology infrastructure in the Hungarian National Library
RÁCZ Ágnes
A government decree in 2016 granted funds (cca. 10 billion HUF) from the state budget for the Hungarian National Library’s IT development. Most of this support is intended for the purchase of hardware, software, and services, and is managed in partnership with the Governmental Information Technology Development Agency. The project is called National Library System (OKR); it consists of several components: infrastructure development, implementation of the library system, creation of a high-capacity digitizing workshop, content development, as well as development of the organization and its services. The National Library Platform (OKP) – as core of the OKR project – is a computerised system supporting library workflows in the national library. In addition, it enables services for the entire library system, and, among others, it operates central databases. The paper summarizes the basic requirements against OKP, presents its modules, and shows how OKP is going to serve a co-operative of Hungarian libraries. It summarizes the expected project results, i.e., renewal in three fundamental areas: the integrated system of the Hungarian National Library, the shared catalogues, and the system of the Hungarian National Bibliography).
Keywords: State support, Development plan, Central services, National library, National library system
Special libraries at the frontiers. Part 4
Changing roles in the 150-year-old Library of the Central Statistical Office
RÓZSA Dávid
The Library of the Central Statistical Office (KSH) celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. During its past history the library fulfilled diverse roles in Hungarian librarianship. At the start, it operated as a departmental library closed for the public; from 1929 it became the second library of the nation; and since 1955, it has been working as a traditional research library. Nowadays, the organization’s public library functions are on the rise. The organizational structure of the library has changed as a result of the emergence of new roles. The five major organizational units of the library were reduced to three departments: Collection Development, Reader Services, and Research Support/Statistical History. The papers covers in detail the evolution of the departments of collection development, reader services and public relations, historical statistics research, and the new databases. Most innovations took place in the fields of research and digitization. The library provides personalized services to KSH staff, handles the data related to publications, supports professional training, strengthens inter-institutional relationships, and takes an increasingly active part in professional programmes . Beside traditional library tasks, current services include research and publishing as well. To sum up, the paper presents a multi-functional library, with its activities equally acknowledged locally, nationally, and internationally .
Keywords: Special library, Statistics
The feasibility of automated content analysis
NAGY Andor
Content analysis, including text analysis, is not a new research method. Systematic analysis of texts already started as early as the 17th century, and since the 20th century, the term content analysis has been used consciously. Later, due to the development of computerization, content analysis as a potential opened up to new areas of application. Automation expedited the methods of content analysis and led to their radical transformation. Through the automated content analysis of articles published by three Hungarian news portals in a given period, the paper presents what automated content analysis can offer and how it can be used in a library environment, among others.
Keywords: Content analysis
WORKSHOP
Reading habits and library use of adults in Hungary in 2017. Quick report from the data of a nationwide representative survey
TÓTH Máté
In the autumn of 2017 the Metropolitan Szabó Ervin Library, in co-operation with the researchers of the Hungarian Library Institute, organized a nationwide representative reading survey among the age groups 3 to 18 and the adult population (older than 18 years). This survey was part of the project “My library” within the EU grant (EFOP, Human Resources Operative Programme) entitled “Museum and library developments for everyone”. The quick report covers the following areas: library use (membership, frequency of use), library utilization, features of reading books and journals, readers’ daily menu (what kind of contents they consumed the previous day), and the evolution of readers’ taste. From its findings the report focuses on time series data that can be compared to previous studies. Some general trends are already noticeable. The frequency of personal library use has decreased slightly, but recently more people benefit from library services than before. The proportion of regular print book readers within the Hungarian society has significantly decreased, while the proportion of non-readers has slightly diminished. There has been no major change in readers’ taste (regarding recent reading or favourite author) over the last decade.
Keywords: Survey, Library use, Reading habits, Reading research
Status report on digitization in Hungarian libraries
BOGNÁR Noémi Erika – HORVÁTH Adrienn – TÓTH Máté
In preparation for the Digital National Development Programme, and the Library Digitization Strategy as part of the Public Collections’ Digitization Strategy, in the summer of 2017 researchers at the Hungarian Library Institute, commissioned by the Ministry of Human Resources, completed a nationwide questionnaire survey on the digitization activities of Hungarian libraries. Participants included the national library, special, academic, church libraries, and large public libraries. The questionnaires were returned by 61.73% of respondents. The collected data covered electronic documents in the given collection, tools used in digitization, the status of digitization in the given library type (work performed vs. work to be completed), and the publication of digital content. 88% of respondents possessed digital documents, and 70% of them carried out digitization of materials in the past year. Most of the libraries (73%) digitized themselves, using their own devices, while others outsourced this work. The typical digitization tools were page and book scanners, although these are not appropriate for mass digitization. County and township libraries can be considered as organizations the most conscious about digitization. It can be stated in general that digitization activities are coming increasingly to the focus of libraries.
Keywords: Digitization, Electronic library, Survey, Librarianship
Locality – from many aspects
BÉNYEI Miklós
The author has recently published a selection of his collection of literary quotations related to the homeland. (The title was reviewed in Könyvtári Figyelő/Library Review, 1/2007, pp. 103-104.) In the current paper he covers various interpretations of the notion of locality, with an emphasis on the relationship between locality and the global world, as well as the role of locality in library work (in local knowledge and local history). Locality refers to the historical past and present of a given place, and deals with the information preserved in oral tradition or in documents related to this place, as collected and transmitted by libraries, archives and museums. Libraries’ local history services have been recently expanded with the opportunities offered by digitization. Through digitization, local knowledge and local history activities no longer exist in local isolation and may join the universal information flow.
Keywords: Local work
E-LEARNING AND LIBRARIES
Suggestions for creating an electronic learning environment
BÁNKESZI Katalin – SZEPESI Judit
E-learning has spread in Hungary mainly in a higher education environment. It had predecessors in the libraries, but has not yet become widely popular there. However, librarians were compelled to face the paradigm shift. The paper presents factors to be considered when introducing e-learning (psychological aspects, social and environmental factors, the role of human resources, the impact of technological and financial conditions); and lists the different forms of adult learning behaviour in the electronic environment, from the perspectives of both students and teachers, and characterizes the required skills. Due to the lack of space and time constraints of online learning, student and teacher roles are quite different from the traditional ones and curriculum is also structured differently, factors to be considered for curriculum development in an e-learning environment.
Keywords: Electronic library, Computerised education, Distance education
OUTLOOK
Digitization in the National Library of the Netherlands
RADÓ Rita
The paper presents the digital evolution of the Dutch National Library (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KB). The library has always been at the forefront of technical development: it opened its first digital storage in 1997, developed a system of long-term preservation of digital content in co-operation with IBM in 2003, and launched national digitization programmes as early as in the 2000s (Memory of the Netherlands, Dutch Parliamentary Papers, Dutch Newspapers Online). The paper describes the start of the Memory of the Netherlands programme, its content, as well as issues of public access and copyright. In 2013, the Delpher Platform was launched, providing access to more than one million books and newspapers. ResearchLab is a platform for linking researchers to the National Library, which supports processing protected content in the KB, and information exchange between researchers.
Keywords: Digitization, Development plans, National library, Netherlands
FROM OUR PAST
A new book from István Nemecskay’s library
KNAPP Éva
István Nemecskay (1792-1884) was a provost of Nagyszombat, a linguist and book collector. Researchers have previously identified two books of his collection. Recently, as third one, a copy of a rare prayer book (Clavis [Clavis, per quam reserantur coeli:...]) has been discovered, which was published by Count Ferenc Széchényi’s grandfather, and also belonged to the collection of Nemecskay. There are three more copies of this title in the Hungarian National Library, and another one in the Austrian National Library. The items belong to two, unseparated variants in the retrospective Hungarian national bibliography. There are, however, significant differences between the copies, because each were made unique by their owners. The paper publishes a detailed analysis of the Nemecskay copy.
Keywords: Bibliophiles, Book history, Book art, History of printing
BOOK REVIEWS
A walk in the Parliamentary Library
Az Országgyűlési Könyvtár. [Villám Judit] [Budapest : Országgyűlés Hivatala.], 2017. 76, [4] p.
(Reviewed by Lajos Murányi)
Keywords: Library history, Parliamentary library, Book review
Studies on library reality
Valóságos könyvtár – könyvtári valóság. Könyvtár- és információtudományi tanulmányok 2016. (Ed. Kiszl Péter, Boda Gáborné Köntös Nelli) [Publ. ELTE BTK Könyvtár- és Információtudományi Intézet), Budapest, 2017. 311 p.
(Reviewed by Katalin Bánkeszi)
Keywords: Digitization, Collection of studies, LIS education, Librarianship, Conference, Book review
A lexicon about the librarian victims of National Socialism
Hohoff, Ulrich: Wissenschaftliche Bibliothekare als Opfer in der NS-Diktatur. Ein Personenlexikon, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2017. XIII, 415 p.
(Reviewed by Péter Sonnevend)
Keywords: Biobibliography, History of librarianship, Book review
FROM FOREIGN LIBRARY AND
INFORMATION SCIENCE JOURNALS (Abstracts)