The 24 th Annual Meeting of the Association of the Hungarian Librarians: Sárospatak, 13—16 August, 1992.

Abstract

On this occasion, not only the meeting itself is worth to report on bul also the town in Northern Hungary where it took place. Sárospatak is one of the oldest school towns of the country. In its college established in 1531, the world-famous Czech schoolmaster, Comenius, gave lessons for four years, (1650- 1654), and this is the place where he wrote his masterpiece Orbis Pictus.
The meeting, traditionally, represented the whole scopeof Hungarian librarianship and information profession. Its program, under the broad title of Our National Resource: The Information, embraced many different aspects of the field of libraries and information services.
Our journal, Scientific and Technical Information (Tudományos és Műszaki Tájékoztatás = TMT), according to its scope, publishes in thls special issue every paper on information policy, services and technology.
One out-of-scope exception is the publication of the address presented by the Hungarian Minister of Cufture and Education, Mr. B. Andrástalvy. The Minister acknowledged that, in the years preceding the political change in this country, librarians had dared to open a window to the world and to territories of Hungarian history that had been declared as prohibited ones. It was less enjoyable in the ministerial address that he warned librarians to be more moderate concerning demands now.
In contrary to this issue, Mr. Gy. Rózsa, the general director of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' Library, produced a detailed list of conditions and requirements which have decisive roles in the development of the guidelines of a national bibliographic information policy and in its gradual implementation. Hungarian library and information policy should be integrated also internationally after its national integration.
The Technical Libraries Section of the Association of the Hungarian Librarians is in the core of TMT's scope. This section, together with the Medical and Agricultural Libraries Section, focussed its attention to would-be information services around the turn of the century in Hungary. All three contributions to their combined session are published in the present issue. Mr. L. Nyíri, vice president of the National Committee for Technical Development, discussed the role of information from the aspect of technology Improvement. He summarized his ideas as follows: "A national information strategy is needed. The main issues of this strategy include:
• The establishment and strengthening of an information market;
• Significant technological development;
• Integration to the world;
• Coordination, cooperation and integration with all segments of information users in this country." The paper presented by Mr. P. Vásárhelyi, general director of Budapest Technical University Library, dealt with the development trend of the Library under market economy conditions. His contribution classified the existing and the desired services, both traditional and automated, of university libraries according to their functions, including assistance in problem solving, support of education, support of learning and help to solve individual problems.
Mr. Z Nádudvari, counsellor of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, talked about the importance of knowledge of literature sources in flexible adoption to any change business. He atso discussed forms and methods of knowledge and information acquisition other than literature reading. Mr. Nádudvari discussed recent problems HCSO has to face due to political changes.
In this special issue of TMT, three additional contributions are also published which are concerned with the advances in automation of public libraries. In her paper titled What Does and What Can the Computer Offer for Readers and Librarians, Mrs. Zs. Tószegi states: "The past year ot two saw a breakthrough of computers in the Hungarian library scene: following the few major libraries who were pioneering in automation but whose results had been eventually isolated from the rest of the libraries, now practically all principial libraries and library institutions have achieved some degree of computer utilization." Beside the satisfaction with the obvious results, the author warns also the audience: however attractive computer systems might be, they can not overrule the fact that "the existence ot a library is based on the readers, on the users"
Mr. G. Kiss presented a case story of the establishment and operation ot a library information system in County Zala. The development of this system was slarted by the County Library in 1986, and it comprises now 6 education institutions, 4 town libraries and 2 local enterprises. reducing this way the overall backwardness of provinciai towns in Hungary.
Mr. Z. Ambrus, the director of the Békés County Library reported in the development of the TEXTLIB system. When completed, this will be the first software developed in Hungary that covers the majority of library jobs, and as such, by selecting appropriate options, it will be capable to support all functions of a small library, e.g., in a little town, by a single personal computer, or to serve a national, a regional or a special central library with its huge holding of up to hundreds of thousand documents.