IAALD NEWS 
 Central and Eastern Europe
National Technical Information Center and Library (OMIKK)
Stubnya, Gyorgy, Director, OMIKK, HUNGARY

From 1990 to 1998 there was a marked trend of the decrease of the number of libraries by 34% and the librarians by 30 %, within the same period the staff of the National Technical Information Center And Library has dropped by 54%. During the last 10 years the value of public sector salary has been decreased more than by 35% in the average therewith the libraries and OMIKK staff have been mostly affected. Nevertheless the situation with the acquisition of documents in 1998 was rather stabilized.

OMIKK is involved in a number of integrated library systems in the country. The Library database contains 315,000 records and among them about 18,000 records in the field of agriculture and food industry. The Center has access to Internet, 5 servers and about 140 PC and provides its users with CD and online databases.

  • OMIKK is actively cooperating both with the institutions in the country and within the EU projects such as:
  • EXPLOIT Pan-European Exploitation of Results of Libraries Programs
  • Electronic Information Services in CCE/NIS
  • EU 5.RTD programs (Hungarian participation)
  • FEMOPET (EU energy project)
  • FEMIRC (EU innovation project)
  • ALETTA program (Aluminum in Environment, Technology and Teaching for Advancement ) implemented with a support of the Great Britain.

OMIKK experience shows that there are several issues for the library to be survivor and competitive: to develop the cooperation within and outside the country, to introduce the automation and electronic services, to enhance the activity in looking for foundations and other supporters, to extent the activity area and to increase the number of users and to control the quality of work performed by partners and contributors.

The Center with the help of regional and town libraries network tries to establish the contact with end users in particular, small and medium size entrepreneurs and farmers; in addition to conventional services in case of universities the Center anticipates to introduce the method of remote teaching.

Because of increasing demand for knowledge in computing and foreign languages to provide services for the library had to increase the number of highly educated personnel but because of limited resources of the state budget only few of them are engaged at permanent basis, therefore we enlist outside contractors or entrepreneurs to support our information and librarian activity. Thus in 1998 about 10 outside specialists were involved mainly in computerized and EU related information services.

The National Committee for Technological Development, EU, the National Cultural Foundation and the National Scientific Research Foundation were among the main supporters of the Center in 1998