Three decades of the Universal Decimal Clasaification in Hungary

Abstract

Traditions of using UDC in Hungary go back to the very beginning of the Century. Gyula Mandello und Ervin Szabó had good contents with the Institut International de Bibliographie in Bruxellea. Ervin Szabó introduced UDC in the Municipal Library in 1912. Between the two World Wars UDC was coming slowly into use. Since the middle of the thirties Géza Káplány and Gyula Veredy promoted effectively the interest in UDC. At that time, however, the syetem was introduced only in a few big libraries, among others in the Széchényi Library.
Soon after the liberation of the country, in 1945, the reorganization of library and information work started. A decisive change took place also in regard of the use of UDC. Libraries and the newly created documentation centres unanimously opted for UDC. In 1949-1950 most of the big scientific and special libraries as well as the networks of public libraries adapted UDC. The current Hungarian National Bibliography, the Repertory of Hungarian Periodicals as well as the book lists of the State Book-Distributing Enterprise published their materials with UDC numbers. The centrally issued catalogue cards included UDC numbers.
The application of UDC was promoted by its inclusion into the curriculae of training courses for librarians.
In 1950 the first abridged UDC edition was published in Hungarian. Till 1955 it had to be reprinted severaltimes. In 1958 an enlarged and updated abridged edition was published. Theee editions have not been officially accepted by the International Fderation for Documentation as they did not conform completely to the official FID schemes. The first abridged UDC edition which was approved by the FID was edited by Gyula Veredy and published in 1966 as FID Publ. 389.
After many initiatives in 1965 the Hungarian full edition was started in the Hungarian Central Technical Library and Documentation Centre. This work was sposored by the Hungarian National Committee for the FID and directed by an editorial committee. The Hungarian full edition (FID Publ. 390.) was published from 1968 to 1972 in 42 volumes some of them already reissued updated. Alphabetical indexes are being prepared to each volume. For continuous updating of the full edition the Hungarian translation of the Extensions and Corrections to the UDC (FID Publ. 428.) has been published eince 1968.
In 1950 a National Committee on Classification was founded, which functions as a special committee of the National Council for Librarianship and Documentation since 1957. Its tasks include to deal with problems of UDC, with the updating of its schemes and with the co-operation with FID. Particularly important is the work done by Hungarian experts in the FID/C 3 committee in the course of the revision of the main class 3 Social Sciences.
Today, at the end of the third decade after the liberation of the country, the UDC is generally used by scientific and special libraries. According to the latest statistical data there exist 8241 autonomous libraries in Hungary out of which approximately 3600 use UDC. Many of the nearly ten thousand public, school and special libraries, administered by voluntary workers, use also UDC. The UDC is well known also in information centres using other indexing languages.