Abstract
In Hungary the system of national and universal library collections and services is provided, not by a single institution, but by the cooperation of three institutions: the ‘ELTE’ Budapest University Library (founded 1635), the National Széchényi Library (founded 1805) and the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (LHAS), the subject of this article. When the first president of the academy, Count József Teleki, founded the library with his own family collection of 30,000 volumes, he ordered that it should be put ‘at the disposal of all citizens of the country’. An international exchange of publications, begun in 1833, today covers about 1,600 institutions in nearly 80 countries. The library has the most important collection of scientific periodicals in Hungary. Computer-based services, most of which are provided on subscription, started with the Science Citation Index database at the beginning of the 1980s. An extension of the subscription services to cover the social sciences is in progress. Access is also being provided to specialized databases, e.g. in the field of economics, sociology and medicine. The latest development is the automation of library ‘housekeeping’ operations. This complex library automation programme is planned to be operational by 1992, and should provide LHAS with an integrated system of information collections and services capable of joining the integrated information system of a Common Europe.
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