On literature searches made at the 1963 Budapest International Fair
Abstract
Following the initiative of the Hungarian State Office for Technical Development the Hungarian Central. Technical library and Centre for Documentation (OMKDK) took part at the 1963 Budapest International Fair, jointly with the information and documentation offices of the major industrial ministries. As an experiment, it was advertised at this fair that technical literature-searching service would be available free of charge, at anybody's request. The success of this experiment was quite unexpected: in contrast to the 300-400 yearly requests for literary searches at the OMKDK by scientific and development institutes, specialists of industry, research workers and other technical personnel this advertised service attracted more than 6000 requests.
The searches were made by about 150 specialists in the technical and information field, under the direction of OMKDK, in a period of 8 months. In 4500 cases the requested topic was covered by 10-15 bibliographical data of informative character, in other cases the search resulted in an average of 50 bibliographical, data, elaborated to deal in detail with every aspect of the given problem.
The result of this service - in addition to the offered and given help - was the growing awareness of the need for technical information in a wider sense; the majority of those who requested information - mostly high school graduate engineers and specialista -70% of the total, made use the first time of an information service.
From the point of view of the organization of technical information services the following conclusions may be drawn from this campaign:
- It proved the existence of important, but, to this very day, unrevealed needs for literary search among engineers.
- The propagation of literature searching and in a wider sense, of information services, is inadequate.
- The administration and financing of requests for literature searches must be simplified.
- There is a possibility to set up a staff able to deal with such a large number of demands.
The files of titles of the processed literature searches will be published by OMKDK in two volumes; the first has appeared in May 1964, the second is to appear in July 1964. The retrieval of the contents of both volumes will be made easier by the use of UDC.
The searches were made by about 150 specialists in the technical and information field, under the direction of OMKDK, in a period of 8 months. In 4500 cases the requested topic was covered by 10-15 bibliographical data of informative character, in other cases the search resulted in an average of 50 bibliographical, data, elaborated to deal in detail with every aspect of the given problem.
The result of this service - in addition to the offered and given help - was the growing awareness of the need for technical information in a wider sense; the majority of those who requested information - mostly high school graduate engineers and specialista -70% of the total, made use the first time of an information service.
From the point of view of the organization of technical information services the following conclusions may be drawn from this campaign:
- It proved the existence of important, but, to this very day, unrevealed needs for literary search among engineers.
- The propagation of literature searching and in a wider sense, of information services, is inadequate.
- The administration and financing of requests for literature searches must be simplified.
- There is a possibility to set up a staff able to deal with such a large number of demands.
The files of titles of the processed literature searches will be published by OMKDK in two volumes; the first has appeared in May 1964, the second is to appear in July 1964. The retrieval of the contents of both volumes will be made easier by the use of UDC.
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Published
2019-04-02
How to Cite
Hoványi, G. On literature searches made at the 1963 Budapest International Fair, Scientific and Technical Information, 11(6), p. 454–469, 2019.
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