Dr. Péter Balázs: Guide to the archives of Hungary (Budapest, 1976)

(Special Archives)

districts (Budapest, Debrecen, Pápa and Sárospatak) have become special archives. Beside the National Archives of the Evangelical Church (Budapest) also the congregations of Békéscsaba, Nyíregyháza, Sopron and Szarvas maintain special archives. The Minister of Culture declared special archives also the records of historical value of the Unitarian, Baptist and Greek Orthodox Serbian Churches and of the Israelite National Representation. There is a referee of archives in the National Catholic Collections' Center (an organization of the Actio Catholica), and there are archivist members also in the General Directorate of Reformed Collections, established in 1957, or its successor, the Reformed Collections' Council, founded in 1969, respectively. In 1972 the Evangelical Church formed also a Collections' Council, containing a referee of archives. The head of the special archives, or the special archives network, respectively, is appointed by the leader of the maintaining body with the previous consent of the Minister of Culture. Similarly to the general archives, the special archives work according to yearly plans. The yearly plan of the special archives and the report on its execution has to be sent by the maintainer in one copy to the Archival Board, which informs the maintainer on its respective remarks. In order to secure the proper fulfilment of the yearly plan and the execution of the respective ministerial decrees, the Archival Board gets in touch with the heads of the archives in each case, when a measure of the maintainer is not necessary. The majority of the material of the special archives is provided with basic inventories. The elaboration of the list of archival groups and subgroups is in progress, to be published by the Archival Board. For security reasons, the Hungarian National Archives has taken and preserves more then 4 million exposures of ecclesiastical material. The Archival Board provided for the elaboration and the publication of the guides to the Esztergom Primatial, the Eger Archepiscopal and the Székesfehérvár Episcopal Archives. Dr. Péter BALÁZS