Digital Library Initiatives in Hungary
The Brief History of the Hungarian Electronic Library
István Moldován
National Széchényi Library
The history and current situation of the networking in Hungary I.
• 1987. launched the National Information Infrastructure Development Program
• 1989. The first services have begun on the basis of the X.25 protocol
• 1990. a large IIF project started, called HBONE (Hungarian Backbone)
The history and current situation of the networking in Hungary II.
• 1993. the first national and the international Internet connection
• 1995-96. appeared the first commercial Internet provider services (IPS)
• 1997. the SULINET - a governmental project to connect all the Hungarian secondary schools to the Internet.
• John von Neumann Digital Library
• Digital Academy of Literature
• Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok County Electronic Library
• Pázmány Péter Electronic Library
• Corvinus Library - Hungarian history
Some Hungarian digital library initiatives
John von Neumann Digital Library
Digital Academy of Literature
Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok County Electronic Library
Pázmány Péter Electronic Library
Corvinus Library - Hungarian history
The Hungarian Electronic Library
• "Electronic publishing" becomes more popular in Hungary
• 1994. The beginning the Hungarian Electronic Library (abbr. MEK)
• It's goal is to make these electronic documents available by collecting, organizing and transforming them to a uniform format using "human labor".
The Hungarian Electronic Library
The sources of the acquisition
• Web homepages
• from authors
• publishers
• volunteers
The formats
• The difficulties in the Internet publishing
• Different formats and accentes
• Reading and preservation
• ”Supported" and "permitted" document formats in the MEK
• ”Supported": ASCII, HTML, TeX
• ”Permitted”: DOC, RTF, PDF
• PKZIP for compressing
Description, navigation
• A simple bibliographic description in a little ASCII file, so called "MEK header file”
• Searching on the basis "MEK header file" by title, authors and keywords
• A simple hierarchical system of menus "electronic bookshelves”
• "New acquisitions"
Virtual library
• We are collecting the URLs:
• of the other Hungarian e-text archives
• of the Hungarian related mailing lists
• of the Internet services of the Hungarian libraries, e.g. online catalogues,
• of the Hungarian electronic journals and newspapers;
Online reference – Ask a Librarian
• Documents to Assistance
• MIT-HOL (Hungarian Online Librarian) Since September 1999.
• 20-30 librarians from different libraries and with different expertise
• archive of all questions and answers
MIT-HOL (Hungarian Online Librarian)
Internet usage
• 3.300 electronic documents
• monthly– users from 24.000 different IP addresses– download more than 1 million files– in size 26-28 gigabytes
• students from from Hungarian universities and highschools
MEK Statistics I.
MEK Statistics II.
Copyright problems
• Complicated situation
• New copyright law since September 1999.
• Library or Publisher
• Publishing or broadcasting
Plans for the future
• to gain and draw into this job more libraries, university departments, other institutions
• make closer relations to publishers and universities
• improve the bibliographic description of our documents
• to compile lists about the most important books in different subjects and sciences
• to begin archiving Hungarian electronic journals with the help of the National Library
Thank you for your attention!
• Please visit our Electronic Library
• URL: HTTP://WWW.MEK.IIF.HU
