AZ ORSZÁGOS SZÉCHÉNYI KÖNYVTÁR ÉVKÖNYVE 1973. Budapest (1976)

I. Az OSZK 1973-ban - Somkuti Gabriella: Az Országos Széchényi Könyvtár 1973. évi működése - The Activities of the National Széchényi Library in 1973

relating to Hungary as well as a good selection from the current literature of our traditional spheres of collection

: literature and Hungarian history. Special emphasis is laid on works of reference, e.g. encyclopaedias, dictionaries, bibliographies and printed catalogues. Catalogues After eleven years of work the reconstruction of the basic catalogue of the Library, the alphabetic catalogue for staff use, has been completed. It contains nearly one million and a half of cards. With its information value increased, built on unified principles, it has become a reliable and up-to-date tool for the staff. The reconstruction of the subject catalogue is still in progress. Its system, the Universal Decimal Classification, raises several problems of reconstruction, to which no satisfactory solution has been found so far. In Hungary new descriptive cataloguing rules are being prepared, which take into consideration both the international standards and processing by machine. Several members of our staff take part in working out the new rules. A detailed analysis of the draft and its comparison with our present practice has been undertaken. A publication describing the catalogues of the National Széchényi Library, comprising 16 printed sheets, came out in 1973, the work of Dr. Gyula HABASZTY and Mrs. L. FARAGÓ. Bibliographic work The current publications making up the Hungarian national bibliography (covering books and periodicals published in Hungary and also the articles relating to Hungary published abroad) appeared regularly. All together there are nine such publications. Under the programme of the mechanization of the production of the Hungarian national bibliography the draft system of the bibliography has been finished. It is based on the MARC II system. The progress of the work enables us to hope that from 1976 we shall be able to bring out the Hungarian National Bibliography by machine. Our retrospective bibliographic work aims at producing modern bibliographies, as complete as possible, for the periods which are inadequately covered, i.e. the early 20th century and the early centuries (16th—18th) of printing. Now the researches on the 18th century

—supported directly by the Ministry of Culture —has been made into a nation-wide action by surveying the 18th century material of all collections existing in the country, whether they are in public or private (Church) ownership. In connection with this scheme our library has to do large-scale organizing work. The Library takes part in several international bibliographic projects, too, and currently reports Hungarian entries to RISM (Repertoire International des Sources Musicales) and ISHB (International Current Bibliography of the History of the Printed Book and Library). Reference Service The relevant figures of the reference activities are given in table No. 3. The number of users, which had been stagnant in the last years, increased by about 5 000. The number of units used also increased. The serving of the readers is becoming more and more difficult

: advance ordering has to be introduced for an ever increasing number of materials, as more parts of the holdings are kept on stacks in various outlying buildings. The number of seats is also very inadequate, especially in the general reading-room. In this question no real improvement can be envisaged until moving into the new building. The number of written answers to reference questions asked by the various institutions at home and abroad exceeded 700. The orders for material to be copied are very much on the increase. The reprographic service met all the demands. 42