Simon Mária Anna: A Magyar Tudományos Akadémia kutatóintézeti könyvtári hálózata (A MTAK kiadványai 51. Budapest, 1966)
The library-network of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
48 This paper attempts to give an overall picture of the situation of the research libraries and of the tasks they have to tackle. Organization. Common function: scientific information. Tools. The organization of the research libraries of the Academy's institutions has been förmed in the years past. In 1961 the directive of the President of the Hungárián Academy of Sciences laid it down that the Library of the Academy should alsó function as Central Library and the centre of documentation carried on in research libraries and institutes. Thus the introduction of unified working methods became possible. The directive provided for the tasks and responsibilities of the Centre (organization of the acquisition and the international exchange of publications, setting up central catalogues, methodological assistance, training and extension courses and so forth), and alsó defined the norms of the necessary premises and personnel. Important among the provisions of the directive are the obligation of planning and reporting, systematic stock taking, elaboration of organizational statutes in every research library. Although these libraries differ in many respects (conditions and spheres of activity, subject field, years of existence and so forth), there is one thing common to them, and it is their function: scientific information which serves the purposes of research work. Every type of library work should be subject to this uniform function. It is this function that defines the work of acquisition: besides acquiring the traditional library material, books and periodicals, in accordance with a co-ordinated acquisition, efforts should alsó be made to acquire any kind of scientific documents that might be used in the given subject field. As a result of the scientific and technological revolution, the non-traditional library material, patents, standards, prospectuses, circulars, research reports and the like, play an ever increasing role in research work and, consequently, in the information work of special libraries. The increasing weight of these documents is shown by data on the ratio of accession in libraries. The ratio of the category of „miscellany" in the totál of accessions shows an upward trend. In 1965 not less than 34,4 per cent of the totál of accessions in the Academy's library network feli into this category. Books, periodicals and other documents stockpiled in libraries may be utilized only if they are properly catalogued, classified, regardless of their form, and thus they are made available to the research worker. The process of making documents available to the reader varies from the simple consultation giving the necessary document into the reader's hand, to the summary of the content of the document, or, in other words, from the alphabetical catalogue to the review and translations. As far as
