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

(Central Archives) - Magyar Országos Levéltár (Hungarian National Archives)

It also keeps the microfilm collection of the Archives and puts the needed pieces at the disposal of the readers. One part of the film archive is stored in a specially arranged locality of the main archival building on compact-system stacks. The negative copies taken of the Archives' own material are stored in Esztergom. The Archives takes exposures not only of its own material, but also of that in other repositories, mainly of the archives of local councils, and preserves the negative copies of such — made for security purposes — in its own film archives. It is here that the films taken of the Hungarian material of archives abroad (Hungarica material) are preserved for archival conservation, equally in two copies, negative and positive. The second group of Section V, the restoring group comprises a workshop for conserving and restoring the endangered and damaged archival material; it is located partly in the main building, partly in the Uri Street. As with the first group, this workshop does not save only the own material of the Archives from decay, but also that of other repositories, especially of the council archives. It is also experimenting to find and to apply the most efficient means of conserving and restoring. The third group, the preservation group of Section V displays a threefold activity. First it cares for the hygiene of the stack-rooms, keeps the premises and the material preserved therein clean. It controls and regulates the temperature and moisture-content of the stack-rooms regularly. Second, it desinfects the records attacked by the various pathogens. The construction of a desinfecting gaschamber for records is planned for the purpose of mass desinfection. Third, it mends and binds the archival finding aids, either added to the material in contemporary management or made in the Archives today. This group is concerned only with the direct defence of the own material of the Archives, it helps other repositories only in an advisory capacity. It also experiments with the application of new or better procedures and means of stack-room hygiene. The Cabinet for source studies is responsible for publications, it prepares monographs and studies of historical sources (auxiliary sciences). The collaborators of the section called Record cadastre are surveying the pre-1526 archival material, preserved in other repositories in Hungary and abroad and significant for national history; they produce the same type of finding aids as were made earlier and are available for the pre-1526 material of the Archives. This sketch on the structure of the Archives may be completed by the