Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 30. (Budapest, 2016)
In memoriam Eszter Tiszavári
IN MEMORIAM ESZTER TISZAVÁRI (1950-2015) Eszter, Mrs Ferenc Tiszavári, née Sípos, was a natural born librarian. When she joined the Museum of Applied Arts more than two decades ago, the library - which she was appointed to direct - was in a distressing state: books would keep arriving and pile up, unregistered, while the backlog of work seemed insurmountable. First and foremost, order had to be created out of chaos; Eszter built up a team of colleagues who shared her dedication to library-related tasks, which she also performed, in addition to her other duties as head of the department. Eszter was born in Törökszentmiklós on 11 August 1950. In 1975 she graduated from the Debrecen Teacher-Training Institute as an educator-librarian, and earned her degree as a chartered librarian from the Nyíregyháza Teacher-Training College in 1978. She joined the Library of the Borsod County Directorate of Education in Miskolc as a librarian as long ago as 1969, eventually becoming its chief librarian; from 1987 she worked as reference librarian at the Central Library of the Faculty of Humanities at ELTE in Budapest; and for twenty years beginning in 1991 she headed the library of the Museum of Applied Arts. At the museum library, Eszter brought the catalogue up to date and revised it at regular intervals. She developed a wide- ranging system of exchange between libraries, mainly through her French and English contacts. She consulted her colleagues for recommendations when expanding the library, and maintained subscriptions for numerous periodicals. She helped the library to grow by submitting several successful tenders. One of her greatest achievements was to launch the library’s computerised register, with the stock entered in the integrated library system (SZIRÉN), complete with analogue processing and metadata. The books published after 1800 held in the former Varia Collections of the Museum of Applied Arts were jointly catalogued with one of her colleagues. The entire stock of the library was made available online, and features the most detailed search user interface. She processed the 157
