AZ ORSZÁGOS SZÉCHÉNYI KÖNYVTÁR ÉVKÖNYVE 1994-1998. Budapest (2000)

I. Az OSZK 1994-1998-ban - Az Országos Széchényi Könyvtár kiadványai 1994-1998 - The Activity of the National Széchényi Library in the Years 1994-1998

Periodicals are processed in the department of the library which was placed in the most critical situation where they made the right decision when they decided to place the emphasis on ensuring the through-put capacity of the current store. However, all aspects of their work could only be of a crisis management nature. Another obstacle they faced in carrying out their tasks was that, due to the technical limitations, they could not link up to the librarys computer network. Under these circumstances, the department was unable to carry out its work and in the course of the restructuring in 1998 it was placed in the big organizational unit which grouped all work related to periodicals, with the exception of cataloguing old newspapers. The new department began operating in mid1998 under the name of Periodicals Processing Department comprising five groups. The first is the Arrivals group, the second the Hungarian National ISSN Centre, the third the Cataloguing group which carries out the traditional processing, the fourth is the Periodicals Bibliography Editorial Office and Updating group where processing is computerized, and the fifth the section dealing with information technology development. They began work with great enthusiasm and achieved good results within six months. Although activity on processing the special collections was impeded by the revision of holdings and related work, there were no serious hold-ups. The possibility of computerized processing and the automatic production of cards for the special catalogues were a great help here. During the five years a total of 248,057 documents of various kinds were processed in the two departments and there was no backlog anywhere. Since the computerized processing made it possible to produce cards automatically, it was only the special card catalogues for the special collections that had to be copied centrally, using a base card produced on a word processor in the stores. As a result, the group dealing with this was also able to undertake other tasks, in particular helping in the revision of holdings. Naturally, the majority of the earlier card catalogues could gradually be closed down by then and new work was done only in the special collections. The service catalogue of periodicals was taken over by the unified Periodicals Processing Department which carried on the work. The work related to the recording of foreign Hungarica material, and bibliographic activity continued as usual. There was no change in the content of the task: the ongoing work needed to build the databases (HUN = Hungarica Information) and the information and bibliographic service based on them as a national library task had to be ensured. Expansion of the HUNG database, that is the Hungarica Biographical Index, was completed, and the data collected on foreign libraries preserving Hungarica material was published. Part of this record, under the name of Hungarica WWW, as a model of the virtual Patriotica library, as well as the HUN and HUNG databases, are now on the Internet. This gives us greater publicity, and at the same time has also added to the information tasks. The Hungarian National Bibliography. Hungarica Published Abroad has been completed and its publication is expected in early 1999. Three new volumes of directories of foreign libraries preserving Hungarica material have appeared: 5. Scandinavian countries, 7. France and 13. Canada. The Hungarica documentation and bibliographic activity is able to give increasing assistance to researchers and enquirers anywhere in the world dealing with this field. Current and retrospective national bibliography, catalogue publications The task of the editorial office of the Hungarian National Bibliography. Bibliography of Periodicals is to build and develop the IKB-Hungarian Periodical Database functioning since 1989, and to issue various publications based on the database. Building the database involves entering bibliographic and classification items for new periodical publications belonging within the collecting scope of the Hungarian national bibliography, and keeping a record of changes in bibliographic and classification data of already existing publications on the basis of the first issues for the year. The database is now accessible on the Internet and with this the library has provided public access to national bibliographic data for periodicals too. A surface suitable for searching the database has also been created on all workstations concerned within the library. The database is able to replace the readers catalogues and in part also the service catalogue. 189