A Historical and Archival Guide to Székesfehérvár (Székesfehérvár, 2003)

THE HISTORY OF SZÉKESFEHÉRVÁR TOWN ARCHIVES

new regulations were made. Hereafter the archives fell under the authority of the county council and was called Archives of Fejér County. When the two archives were fused in 1950 the documents of the town stayed in their place further on. The documents were stored in the basement of the town-hall and in the cellar of the Franciscan church. A more up-to-date placement of the documents was carried out in the 1970s, when they were placed in the buildings of the county archives in Szent István Square. * Székesfehérvár Town of County Rank was the first in the country to establish its independent archival institute following the change of the regime. The institute was founded on 15 February 1992. With the restoration of the organisational independence Székesfehérvár adopted the former Hungarian and the European legal practice; the archives ensure to preserve the documents of its legal predecessors by exercising property rights over them. A part of the ground-floor rooms of the building at 10 Zichy Grove and the ground-floor offices of the building attached to it at 8 Honvéd Street were designated as the headquarters of the archives. The archival documents were separated in 1992-1993. The documents of town provenance were separated from other documents of the county archives, in a volume of 893 linear meters. The archives had 309 square metres floor-space at its foundation in 1992. As the archives received further documents, the capacity of the repository had to be enlarged (118 square metres) in 1994. In 2001 the institute was increased by 506 square metres of floor-place. Offices, processing rooms, a research and reading room and a paper-restorer workshop were established besides enlarging the repository area. The best utilisation of the given space is provided by mobile shelves in the new store rooms. The shelves can be placed at an optional distance from each other depending on the size of the documents. The documents are put in stainless boxes, which fully meets the requirements of the protection of works of art.