Developing the information infrastructure for higher education and for public document collections in Hungary

Abstract

The Hungarian government has decided to apaproach the level of higher education in Hungary of that in Europe and, for this purpose, it established a foundation supported by an IMF loan. A part of the project is to raise the information infrastruclure level in universities and in other schools to a standard accepted throughout Western Europe. The principal basis of information for educational purposes at universities and graduate schools is the various public collections of libraries, museums, archives etc. The conference of leading personalities in the Ministry of Education and Culture approved the development concepts and the project of the information infrastructure for university libraries and other public collections for the period 1992-1994. This conception regards information infrastruclure as a complex project and, consequently, a unified development project has been endorsed for the development of computer hardware and software tools, of telecommunication and video systems used in the infrastructure of public collections. The expenses needed for this project amount to 4-5 billion Fts. The major investment source is the Foundation for the Information Infrastruclure Development project that has been established by the Ministry of Education and Culture partly from government's budget and partly from contributions of banks and computer companies.