Gulyás Katalin – Horváth László – Kaposvári Gyöngyi – Pató Mária szerk.: Nyitott kapuk. Hetvenéves a szolnoki Damjanich János Múzeum (A Damjanich János Múzeum kincsei, 2004)

Angol nyelvű összefoglaló

a good reason to that initiative. The event is still trying to give a comprehensive review of contemporary Hungarian artistic life. MÁRIA PATÓ: THE HISTORY OF THE REFERENCE LIBRARY The base of the material of the reference library of the János Damjanich Museum of Szolnok was established when archivist Viktor Hild's bequest became public property in 1934. This donation gave a new impulse to the public library, which had been under organisation for a long time. As a result of Béla Balogh's enthusiastic and assiduous work in the same year the Szolnok Town Library and Museum Collection was opened. By 1944 the constantly growing collection had reached ten thousand volumes. World War II caused considerable damage to the whole institution. Re-opened in 1948, the library was completed with publications sentenced to devastation and saved from the beater roll of the paper plant of Szolnok and with volumes that got into the collection after the liquidation of the Franciscan library. The collection holds many valuable unique books as well as ethnographer Balázs Csete's and evangelical priest Károly Kontsek's libraries. Apart from old books the library also possesses a noteworthy collection of journals including county and national periodicals from the 19"

1 and 2Cr

n centuries. The last 70 years have brought several changes to the life of this little library, and by today we can proudly say that it has become a real reference library. ISTVÁN VADÁSZ: ON THE NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTION Among the exhibits of the 1927 geographical exhibition of Szolnok, in the "archaeological room" there were 23 objects which, according the consignment list, served to present the "palaeolithic fauna". Based on the denomination and supposed sites of these objects, we can conclude that they demonstrated the nature of the pleistocene age, or more exactly some representative specimen of the zoology that turned up from that age. By this time many ancient animal findings had been unearthed in the country near riverbanks, in fishermen's nets, in sand-pits and in hydraulic engineering works. The best known ones are the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the alces, the reindeer, the bison, the steer and the giant deer. These pieces could belong to the era between 100.000 and 5-6000 ВС. We can collect a lot of important information about the development of the watercourse of the Tisza around Szolnok from Béla Balogh's geographical descriptions. He emphatically mentions that in the introflexed side of the bends damaged by the water "the yellow of the aeolian soil can be seen flecked with layers of bogs and from under the underwashed banks the water washes out the bones of Quaternary animals". These findings might have got into the material of the geographical exhibition. We know very little about the later allotment of these objects. In our short artiCAPTIONS László Horváth: Introduction 1. The entrance of the building today, 1. Táncsics Mihály Str. 2. The construction of a town tenement house in 1928. The man with a moustache wearing a light suit is Mayor Tamás Tóth. 3. The Royal Hungarian Hotel at the beginning of the 20th centrury. 4. The museum today László Szabó - Eva Gulyás: Museum History 1. Viktor Hild (1855-1929) 2. Benő Gábor Pogány: Béla Balogh 3. Béla Balogh (1895-1947) 4. Mihály Patay: General Damjanich 5. Symbolic new year's drawing by Mihály Gácsi 6. Benő Gábor Pogány: Gyula Kaposvári 7. The battle of Szolnok. The introductory exhibition at the Town Hall, 1949 8. Part of the visitor's book of the Battle of Szolnok exhibition, 1949 9. Public notice for handing archaeological and ethnographic object to the museum, 1951 10. Fraction of the 1954 standing exhibition: the age of Turks 144