Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 1996

Rövid tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven

• As part of the modernization of working methods, a computer network is running at the Postal Museum, and a museum data base is being established. Preparations have begun to introduce the Matáv accounting system for pay. From September 1 onwards, pay will be transferred by giro into employees’ bank accounts.

• The work of modernizing the Stamp Museum’s cataloguing and collection-handling system was again not completed in 1996. Although the Hungarian Post PLC agreed, in its guidelines in 1993, to separating the stock collection from the duplicates, this has still not been applied in the new draft regulations.

• For the fifth year, the Foundation failed to elicit directives from the president-managing directors of Matáv and the Hungarian Post making it compulsory to archive items of museum value, despite discussions and agreement in principle. This would alleviate the museums’ constant storage problems, and their problems of organizing the work of archiving relics from the recent past.

• Public relations at the Foundation’s museums have taken two directions. One has been to ‘reach out’ from the museum. A display was mounted at the AIESEC conference at the Budapest University of Economic Sciences. There was participation in the May Museum Festival in the garden of the Hungarian National Museum. A contribution was made to the ‘Butterfly Effect’ media-art exhibition at the Budapest Műcsarnok (Hall of Art). The ‘Token Alternatives’ telephone-card exhibition was held at the János Xantus Museum in Győr. The Treasures of Hungarian Museums on Stamps exhibition took place at the Hungarian National Museum. The ‘Hungary 1100 - Budapest ’96’ international stamp exhibition and exhibitions on the World Day of Postal and Philatelic History were mounted at the Hungarian Cultural Foundation premises. The new exhibition opened at the Opusztaszer National Historical Memorial Park. A contribution was made to an exhibition about early clubs and societies, at the Planetarium. A display of the life and work of Mihály Gervay was mounted at the Mihály Gervay Postal and Banking Secondary School, and an exhibition of Hungarian stamps depicting Nobel Prize-winners at the György Békésy Postal and Telecommunications Secondary School. The other has been to invite the founder companies into the museum. A Gervay memorial day and musical and literary events took place at the Postal Museum, as did meetings of Mafitt (the Hungarian Philatelic Scientific Society). A museum coffee-house event was held at the Radio and Television Museum. There were exhibition openings on world days, and events such as Farewell to the Last Manual Telephone Exchange, Advent Salon at the Postal Museum, etc.

• International relations have shown a welcome expansion. The Foundation, in conjunction with the Budapest Transport Museum, hosted the meeting of the Presiding Committee of the IATM-PTT (International Association of Transport and Communications Museums) in April. Two study trips were made to see the collections of partner museums in Germany. Several directors of foreign museums visited the Foundation’s institutions.

• Applications were submitted to the Telecommunications Foundation and the Soros Foundation for funding to publish a CD on radio history and to restore historic maps and books.

301