The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)

NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL ARCHIVES OF NATIONAL COLLECTION - The Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security by Gergő Bendegúz Cseh

documents created and used by the organizations. Most documents of the archives are paper based but we also maintain a great quantity of security micro-film copies about investigative and operative files and about Daily Operative Informative Reports / NOIJ in Hungarian. Archival processing of the documents of Historical Archives are different at several points from the practice of traditional archives because of their character, and because of the nearly total lack of contemporary finding aids and the special obligation to supply data. In the central data base of the institution each important data of the files that can help in research is saved. The data of people occurring in the documents is also registered with the help of computer index and besides these we digitalize the most often used or ruined documents. These three steps of archival processing ensure that the institution is able to meet the requirements of our time despite the fragmented documents and the lack of study aids and: the obligation to supply and to fulfil the requirements of special research. THE CITIZENS' RIGHT OF INSPECTION According to the statutory regulation the Historical Archives makes possible for people presented in the documents - independent of their citizenship - to inspect the data about them in the documents. Due to the Parliamentary act the person named in the documents, that is maintained by the archives, can also have access to the data related to him and the reports about him by an agent or a professional employee and which the data is appropriate for his identification. If the person in the document is dead, his relatives are allowed to inspect data. In the case of the deceased, the relatives have to certify their relationship with a register. RESEARCH IN THE HISTORICAL ARCHIVES There is possibility for research in the documents of the Historical Archives. Because of the character of these documents made by the state security services the research in personal data is regulated much more strictly by the Act III. of 2003; than in the cases of other archives. Under the rule of law there are two possibilities for research for people who are interested in them. One is the scientific research and the other one is the so-called private research. The person is determined a scientific researcher by the act who does have