„System change" in Hungarian libraries - fashion or pressure?

Abstract

Libraries frequently complain of financial difficulties. However, they have been spending much to the automation of library functions, even they are forced to cancel the subschption for expensive journals and/or for the acquisition of international textbooks. What is behind such decisions? The steadily developing technological background leading to computers with ever growing performance? Or the difficulties of maintaining of and component supply for „old" machines? Or the expanding illegi-bility of recorded data with the obsolencence and disappearance of suitable technical devices? Or the evolution of software, primarily that of operating systems? Or the challenging networking trends as well as requirements of new standards, proto-cols in accordance with networking applications? Or simply the growing demand for library automation? The authors seek the answers, based on the development of computer and information systems in the last decade, what a library should be oriented to, and what challenges should today a lasting library system face.