Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 1998
Rövid tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven
tion’s application had been successful: the Postal Museum would receive a non-repayable grant of HUF 7 million towards its second multimedia CD publication, entitled The History of Hungarian Telecommunications 1-Telegraph, Telex, Data Transmission. Between these two documents, under 564 main serial numbers, the varied and diverse activity of the museums and the Foundation in 1998 are contained in more than a thousand files. These are summarized briefly below, under the customary headings. Management and administration • Publication in a uniform framework of the statutes, orders, directives and documents for the Foundation and its museums had to be postponed, as the Foundation gained the status of a priority organization for the public benefit, and its board of trustees was only constituted in mid-December. • A survey of the real estate and rented premises used by the Foundation and its museums was completed, along with a draft of the likely development plans. • On the subject of enlarging the Stamp Museum, discussions with the heads of the Ministry of Transport, Telecommunications and Water Management led to the Ministry drafting preliminary plans for utilizing the Erzsébet Telephone Exchange that incorporate the Museum’s space requirements. These will be presented shortly, when preparation of the study plans and budget estimate can begin. • The stores underwent a crisis due to the cramped conditions in the exhibition areas and the delay by Matáv PLC and the Hungarian Post PLC in publishing managing director’s directives on protecting relics of museum value. (This has been postponed year after year since 1992, although the trustees have always pressed for it, and it has circulated every year at Matáv as an approved draft directive.) To resolve this, we submitted a request to make museum use of the huge switch room at the Terézváros Telephone Exchange. Since this has been designated for other uses, the Foundation has been promised the empty second-floor machine room at the Csepel Telephone Exchange as a store for relics of telecommunications history. • The Foundation was able to take possession in September 1998 of a 60 sq.m, flat on the second floor of Andrássy út 3, where a reading room and data base for the Postal Museum library are being accommodated. • The Foundation’s employer-employee contracts were modified. • New regulations for the handling of petty cash were issued. • Regulations were compiled on the compilation and conduct of inventories, discarding of stock, and valuation of assets and resources. Tasks with the collections • The audited inventory of the Postal Museum library stock was completed. • By extending rented premises, storage space was gained for the picture and illustration collection, the document archive and collection of archive fonds, and for the miniature printed materials. • The accessions during the year came mainly from donations and purchases. Only to a very small extent did they result from local collection visits to installations. 234
