Development, tasks and trends of the library and its related network activities of the Information Centre for Building (ÉTK)

Abstract

The organisntion of documentation in the building industry started its development simultaneously with the evolation of the socialist building industry in Hungary. It took years to lay the foundations necessary to carrying out the tasks of documentation. First this process was characterized by a heavy emphasis on the stock of periodicals. With the information needs and interest in technical literature increased, the library, which formerly was supposed to meet the internal needs, has been made available to all types of specialists of building and construction (researchers, engineers, designers etc.) and now forms a valuable central institution complementary to the network of industrial special libraries. The collections of the library - books, periodicals, research reports and reports on study tours, firm literature, standards, patents etc. -, owing to their current nature, form a most significant basis of the subject field's special literature. In the course of development certain functions arose which are now performed by the library within the institution known - since 1965 - as Information Centre for Building (ÉTK). These tasks include:
1. functioning as the scientific special library in the technical and economic fields of building and construction;
2. ensuring a documect basis necessary to the institute's information work;
3. functioning as a centre for the library network.
In addition to the traditional duties of reader'a service (reference and circulation), the library's services include literature searches, processing documents on effective legal measures, laws, rules, etc. relating to building and construction, maintaining central catalogues and so forth.
Since 1958, ÉTK has also acted as a professional supervising and methodological advisory body of special libraries in the building industry. To develop library activities, ÉTK plans to set up a central library for building and construction which fits into the information system of this industrial sector with its library and documentation work, thus meeting the comprehensive special literature needs of both the specialists and the entire sector.