AZ ORSZÁGOS SZÉCHÉNYI KÖNYVTÁR ÉVKÖNYVE 1960. Budapest (1962)

IV. Könyvtár- és művelődéstörténeti tanulmányok - Summaries

Report on the activity of the National Széchényi Library in 1960 During the year 1960 the National Széchényi Library succeeded in expanding its manyfold services. The main difficulty, as in the past, centered around the extreme shortage of space. The rich collections consisting of about three and a half millions bibliographical units are accommodated only with difficulty in the old building of the National Museum and besides, several nation-wide library services had to be equally operated within the same restricted area. In 1960 arrangements were continued preparatory to moving into the designated new home of the Library, the former royal castle in the fortress of Buda. The new •accommodation (in about 5 years' time) will enable the national library to exercise its important functions, under more favourable circumstances. Administration Throughout the year all the important current matters were discussed jointly by the Director-General and the Council of the Library, composed of the leading officials. The establishment of a new division, the stack, was the only change in the library's organizational structure. New methods were introduced in the professional training of the collaborators. The Library's party and trade-union organizations assisted the management in many respects. Relations with countries abroad expanded, exchanges and loans increased in both •directions. Several collaborators participated in international meetings and numerous foreign librarians visited the Library in 1960. Despite the increase in the Library's general budget, some difficulties had to be overcome in the financial domain. New technical equipment improved the services of the Library's printing and book-binding shops, etc. Acquisitions 150,000 bibliographical units were added to the Library's collections in 1960 (of which books represent 33%; manuscripts 10°/

0

; musical compositions, records and geographical maps 1,4%; posters, small-prints, standards, engravings 45%; reproductions 2,3%, other documents 5,3%. Considering the additions to the collections by source, 70% came from copyright deposits, 15,3% from purchase, 8,8% from gifts (including the material handed over to the Library by the service which distributed old material), 4,0% from exchanges and 1,9% represented the Library's own production. The acquisiton work was further improved during the year. More emphasis was given to acquiring material from the neighbouring countries. The new acquisition policies were more closely followed. Also some valuable legacies fell to the Library. The special collections acquired more documents than planned. Unfortunately the filling of the painful gaps in the Library's holdings did not proceed at the prescribed pace and the planned establishing of a new open-shelf collection in the main reading room was only partially realized. Cataloguing The main stream of current Hungarian material deposited as legal copies was catalogued by the Bibliographical Division, the rest by the Processing Division; in general, both services complied with the prescriptions regarding plan figures. The drive instituted with regard to the photographic reproduction of the old catalogxie cards was terminated, the cards were inserted into the new catalogues. The revision of the subject-catalogue continued. Because of shortage in the personnel of the service charged with the multiplication of catalogue-cards, the planned speeding up of the processing of books, etc., could not be realized. The Division of Periodicals and the Special Collections did good work in the processing of their material. (Some features

: the Music Division continued its work on its collection of autographs

; the Theatre-history Division worked on the completion of its file of theatrical casts; the Division of Posters and Small-prints catalogued its graphical posters; the Map Division compiled its collection of analecta; the Manuscript Division edited a new publication by the title „Catalogue des volumes manuscrits francais" and continued working on the catalogue of the Library's Latin, German and Hungarian manuscripts. The Old and Rare Books Division made important progress in compiling the Union Catalogue of Incunabula of Hungary, etc.). 335