AZ ORSZÁGOS SZÉCHÉNYI KÖNYVTÁR ÉVKÖNYVE 1971-1972. Budapest (1973)

I. Az OSZK 1970-197l-ben - Somkuti Gabriella: Az Országos Széchényi Könyvtár 1970—1971. évi működése - The Activities of the National Széchényi Library in 1970—1971

The Activities oj the National Széchényi Library in 1970-1971 Between 1963 and 1969 all work in the Library was subordinated to the preparations for the occupation of the new building in the Vár (Castle Hill) district. But as it became evident that this long-waited event can take place at best only at the end of the present decade, the further development of the activities most urgently needed by society — such as the bibliographical and documentational services and the central coordinative tasks—could no longer be postponed until after moving. Despite the present grave problems caused by inadequate accomodation the Library had to try to go ahead with new concepts and solutions in these important fields. One of the basic aims of the new decade was to deal with the most urgent new tasks together with carrying on the traditional duties and continuing the preparations for the new building. I. The Holdings of the Library Acquisitons ' In 1970-1971 the holdings of the Library increased with 72,148 books, 9,865 volumes of periodicals and 206,210 other documents, all together with 288,223 units. Acquisition by means of buying —mostly from abroad —was greatly influenced by the rising book-prices: in spite of a 20 percent increase in expenditure the quantity of acquisitions fell. At the same time credit limits were raised so that the Library could carry out purchasings of a higher order on the foreign second-hand book market and in auctions (e. g. the buying of four autograph Liszt-manuscripts). There were valuable additions to the Manuscript Collection, to the Collection of Ancient Books and to the Old Hungarian Library, too. One of the most important new acquisitions resulted from accident: in the course of restoring a recently bought incunable of Hungarian provencience a fragment was found in the cover containing polyphonic notes from the time of SIGISMUJSTD, King of Hungary and Holy Roman Emperor (1361-1437). In addition to its importance for music history it is also a peerless language-relic: its four Hungarian verse lines represent the second oldest example of Hungarian lyrics. Catalogues Parallel with the regular processing work the reconstruction of the basic catalogues (the readers's alphabetic catalogue, the staff catalogue and the subject catalogue) was carried on. Their revision and modernization aims mainly at increasing their information value. In processing the material of the special collections the greatest problems arose in the Manuscript Collection owing to the large mimber of 20th century documents. Simplified processing was introduced for these fonds. Biblio graph ies The Library systematically processed the literary product of Hungary through the system of the Hungarian National Bibliography. The expansion of this current bibliographical service was started on two lines

: on the one hand the traditional method of differentiation according to the types of the documents was continued and extended, and on the other preparations have been started for the production of the national bibliography by machine. This last question deserves a few more words. As the basic research has already been done by other countri es, our first aim was to study the foreign systems. Dr. Géza SEBESTYÉN, the Deputy Director General studied the mechanized Deutsche Nationalbibliographie in Frankfurt am Main, and in the same year (1969) we got acquainted with the electronic data processing system of the Library of Congress and with its new MARC II version, while following the respective Soviet experiments, too. On the basis of these theoretical preparations in 1970-1971 a new, experimental phase was entered. Adapting the MARC II system two experimental booklets of the Hungarian National Bibliography were published at the beginning of 1971, to be followed by a third one, the cumulation of the first two. 73