AZ ORSZÁGOS SZÉCHÉNYI KÖNYVTÁR ÉVKÖNYVE 1986-1990. Budapest (1994)

I. Az OSZK 1986-1990-ben - Az Országos Széchényi Könyvtár működése 1986-1990-ben - The Activity of the National Széchényi Library in the Years 1986-1990

Processing, catalogues, current national bibliography work It is the duty of the National Library to process its new acquisitions not only for its catalogues but also for issue of the titles and data of Hungarian publications in publications forming part of the Hungarian National Bibliography. In the last ten years or so it achieved this through double processing: the same work was processed in one department for catalogue purposes and in another for the bibliography. This situation had to be ended, in part by making the application of international standards compulsory and in part by making full use of the advantages of computerization. However, it was only under the conditions available in the new building that it became possible to rationalize the double processing. Through revision of the work process and organizational changes, a processing system was successfully created for the books and periodicals arriving as deposit copies in which the results (data) of the different processing stations can be used by the subsequent stations and are made suitable for both the catalogues and the bibliographies. The system introduced has been operating smothly since 1988 and it also has the considerable advantage of being far more economical than the earlier system. In the case of current Hungarian books it has meant a reduction of 75—80% in processing and even when calculated for the full (including foreign) material, this "savings" is around 50%. The volume of the material processed can only be evaluated on the basis of the reports published since 1988, giving annual average figures. These show that the full current processing (including also the foreign material) involved the bibliographical description of 12,300 works in approx. 12,900 items. In the case of periodicals this was the case for 2,000 titles. The volume of work done each year covered 5,100 items in the bibliography of serials 15,000 items in the repertory and 16,000 items of "Hungarica" material. (Hungarica = library material relating to Hungary, Hungarian people or Hungarian language.) Naturally, this is only one aspect of the processing activity as a whole; no mention has been made here of the description of foreign works, recataloguing, corrections, etc. Processing was done in the special collections too, in many cases together with the rearrangement of sections of the stock. For technical reasons there were problems with the supply of cards for the catalogues, but the modernized production of cards and the introduction of on-line cataloguing is solving this problem too. * As already mentioned, the reform of the current Hungarian national bibliography was made from 1988. The annual volumes, the booklets and the indexes for the various publications always appeared on schedule. A quarterly entitled New Periodicals which became very popular and a comprehensive publication covering a new area were added to the existing bibliographies in booklet form. The descriptions were continuously added to the database set up by the library in the second half of the seventies. Since then the volume of records stored in it has been growing at a steadily increasing pace and by the end of 1990 reached a total of close to 307,000. * The documentation and registration work on Hungarian-related material (so called Hungarica) is closely related to the national bibliography work. Although the library has been carrying out work in this field ever since it was set up close to two centuries ago, developing it to make it increasingly intensive and better organized, in the past five years greater emphasis than ever before has been placed on it. In 1988 it set up a documentation department for Hungarica and modern operating conditons were created (personnel, computer processing, etc.). 80