Library digitisation in Europe and in Hungary

Abstract

In April 2001 the representatives of 15 EU member countries declared in Lund, Sweden that an ongoing forum for digitisation should be established to grant a European dimension to cultural digitisation, and to promote the accessibility and visibility of European digital cultural heritage. It was in this spirit that the Europeana project was born, and digitisation in libraries and public collections has started or strengthened in Europe. The Minerva and the MinervaPlus projects began relying on the so-called Lund principles, followed by Europeana in 2008. The latter is operated by the EDL Foundation which provides the resources necessary for its operation, contributes to the sustainability of the portal, and ensures the legal framework as well for its utilisation within the EU. An Expert Committee, from the representatives of member countries, compiles regular country reports for the European Commission. Unfortunately, the answers from Hungary to the questions put are in many cases negative or rather uncertain. Currently the issue of national aggregators is on the agenda: the National Széchényi Library will be the aggregator (mediator) of printed materials towards Europeana, the national aggregator for museum materials will be the Hungarian National Museum (MNM), for audiovisual materials the Neumann House, while for archives materials the Hungarian National Archives (MOL) will be responsible. Based on statistical data collection we are now able to provide an approximate picture about digitisation in Hungarian libraries: the number of electronic (digital) materials in libraries makes up 900 thousand, and most of them (560 thousand items) are held in the collection of the Neumann House–NAVA (National Audiovisual Archive) (2008). Part of the funds to be used for digitisation is available in the operational programmes of the New Hungary Development Plan. The Social Renewal Operational Programme (TÁMOP), however, does not, unfortunately, allow to implement mass digitisation as has been originally planned. The other EU resource is the Electronic Public Administration Operational Programme (EKOP) – it supports the project Digitised Legislation Knowledge Store. What are the problems impeding digitisation in Hungary? A lack of co-ordination; financing problems; lack of standards; legal issues to be solved (copyright, property rights, public domain, orphan works etc.).