Dr. Péter Balázs: Guide to the archives of Hungary (Budapest, 1976)

(Central Archives) - Magyar Országos Levéltár (Hungarian National Archives)

ving and managing the records of the economic organizations taken over as state property, the Central Economic Archives. When this body was abolished in 1962, the records were taken over by the National Archives. In the bourgeois period of its history the Archives had no connection with the bodies whose records it had to take over after a period. This has been changed in the socialist period, and now the Archives regularly control and help in the management of records, in the first place in the selection of records by the organizations. Since the establishment of the New Hungarian Central Archives in 1970 this work has been considerably reduced. In the socialist period the Archives has devoted much greater care to the safe custody of its material than it did in the bourgeois period. In this time it has established or developed further its workshops for photographing, conserving and restoring, also for bookbinding. Now a regular service of stack-room hygiene has been introduced as well. The whole work of the Archives is done according to plan in the socialist period. The actual tasks are defined by yearly and quinquennial plans, their fulfilment is treated in detailed reports, which are published in the archival journals. The favourable results of planning have manifested themselves in increased activity in locating records, in the arrangement of the material and in the adding various finding aids to it in the first place. They have also been felt in the archival publications which developped their literary genre and surpassed also in quantity those published in the bourgeois period. It is due partly to the quantitative increase in the material, partly to the results of locating, arranging and producing of finding aids that the archival service of information and reference has been greatly increased. The number of research workers both from the country and abroad has been multiplied. A special research room has been opened for those who use the microfilm material taken in the country and abroad. The development of the international connections of the Archives is shown partly in the increase of the number of foreign researchers and of informations sent abroad, and partly in study trips and participation in international programmes. The Archives has a part in the instruction of archivists, initiated in 1949 by Budapest University. This instruction, unknown in the bourgeois period, developped in various forms. This sketchy and incomplete summary shows, how much richer, more varied and more effective he work of the Archives has become in the