Search

The review deals with two provocative articles (by Tom Wilson and F. J. Miller respectively) about the challenges of knowledge management. Knowledge management can be regarded on the one hand as a mania or a fashion, a notion that many people mix up and use synonymously with information management; on the other hand, it gives the impression that information processes can be managed effectively. Sceptical voices do not doubt that knowledge management experts can contribute efficiently to the management of enterprises, but they think the question should not be oversimplified. It would be more important to create the right conditions and mechanisms to support the acquirement and effective use of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libraries cannot confine their activities to merely preserving and providing documents; the wide range of their functions flexibly responds to the rapidly changing needs of society. Besides library services becoming more complex, over the past three decades, since the change of the political system, Hungarian libraries have also adapted to operating within a market economy framework. From public institutions operating under a lot of pressure among their competitors this requires a major shift in perspective, still ongoing today. To remain competitive, five criteria need to be met: (1) Leaders of libraries shall have adequate financial knowledge and management skills. (2) Libraries are required to continuously prove their social utility to their maintainers. (3) There is an increasing focus on effectiveness in the operation of libraries. (4) Embedded participation, in line with each library's type both in nature and intensity, is expected in (regional) economic development. (5) The boundary between traditional and atypical services of libraries is beginning to blur; educational and social engagement needs to be increased. This study examines, both from a theoretical and a practical perspective, the international library innovations connected to the development of (1) digital literacy, (2) financial literacy, and (3) business, integrated into the current global and local, mostly education-oriented set of instruments related to sustainability. The paper also addresses the connections between library financing and economic value creation, and the possible returns on tax money spent on the library system. The analysis is concluded by posing topical questions on cultural economics requiring further research, from the field of library and information science, raised by rapidly changing circumstances (e.g., Covid-19). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The HUMAN US database (of essays and articles in the humanities) is responsible for registering articles in a nationally coordinated manner in certain subject fields (literary science, linguistics, history, military science, political science, library science, book history, philosophy, religion, theology, art, education, folklore, local history) in order to avoid parallel efforts. (The list of participating institutions is not yet complete, there are some fields waiting for a contributing library as a co-operating partner.) The database relies on the Bodza software framework which has been developed for the very purpose of processing parts of documents. Co-operation is implemented within the framework of a consortium, with the Humanities Bibliography Department of the National Szechenyi Library as the co-ordinator. The author outlined the advantages of co-operation between the National Széchényi Library and external bibliographical centres as the working method, and illustrated the levels of co-operation and processing with examples from the HUMANUS homepage (www.oszk.hu/humanus). The first step in co-operation is to co-ordinate journal processing, the next one is to plan the coordinated processing of collections of essays. The paper is illustrated by a step-by-step guide to the analytical processing of a multi-volume work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The president of the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations initiated a discussion on the creation of a common library policy in Europe at the conference of the European Centre for Parliamentary Research and Documentation in Vienna (May 30, 2008). The European library landscape is heterogeneous, only the two-thirds of the 27 EU-countries have legislation governing the library sector. A common policy guideline was published by EBLIDA and the Council of Europe in 2000, but it has not proved to be very effective. It would be important to concentrate on compiling a White Paper that describes the role of libraries in Europe and recommends the member states to act on behalf of the libraries.To provide relevant information about European library issues the EBLIDA Executive Committee has decided to establish a Knowledge and Information Centre (KIC) to collect, mediate and disseminate information about the library, information and documentation sector in Europe. The president describes the aims of KIC, and characterises the tasks of five expert groups (on information law, digitization and online access, life-long learning and education, culture and information society, professional education). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper summarizes the outcomes of a survey recently carried out at the medical libraries of county hospitals. The survey investigated the changing needs of users in the field of information searching and library use. Due to the heavy work-related pressure and lack of time, health professionals show an increasing tendency of accessing professional literature from home, using electronic resources. However, the majority of users still use both print journals and online resources. One of the problems of using electronic resources is the inefficiency of searching, which is partly due to the insufficient searching skills of the users, but also to the shortcomings of the products and services themselves. User education remains the main task for librarians in order to optimize the use of expensive medical information sources. While the information infrastructure should be ensured and improved by the individual hospitals, the licensing of full-text medical journal databases should be coordinated and financed centrally, possibly by the Ministry of Health itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of Hungarian medical journals has extensive literature, with a great number of publications accessible via the Internet. The paper hopes to contribute to the existing literature with facts and details that have not been sufficiently covered by previous publications, thus represent new information for the researchers and the wide public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A „Kirakatba Àllítás Szerzői Effektusa" (KÀSZE) a publikáló szerzők azon tevékenysége, amellyel szabad akaratukból megformálják közleményük formális hivatkozásállományát, beállítva azt ilyen módon a tudomãny kirakatába. Tanulmányunk előző közleményében (TMT, 54. evt 2007. 11-12. sz.) bemutattuk a KÀSZE-jelenséget, okait és nyomait a természettudományi szakirodalomban, és meghatároztuk az effektus fogalmát. Ebben a közleményben ismertetjük egy, a KÀSZE-jelenség létezésének és érvényesülésének kérdését eldönteni hivatott döntő prôba eredményeit. A vizsgálat anyaga 15, tudománytörténeti szempontbôl egyidejü nemzetközi fizikatudományi konferencia 1175 közleménye volt. A döntő próba során a bibliometria és a tudományfilológia módszereit alkalmazva részletesen bemutatjuk és elemezzük a KÀSZE-jelenség érvényesülését a tudomãnyos szakirodalom egy ilyen, elvileg-elméletileg Ieghomogénebb tartományában. Az egy-egy tárgykörben megtartott fizikatudományi konferenciák közleményeinek feltãrt, minden szempontbôl szélsőségesen különböző abszolút és specifikus (fajlagos) dokumentáltsága, különösen a formális hivatkozásãllományok szélsőségesen különböző nagysága, kizárólag a publikáló szerzők személyétől függ, így érvényes bizonyítéka az effektus létezésének és hatékony működésének a tudományos szakirodalomban. A döntő prôba az effektus igazolásán túlmenően kimutatta két, kiegészítő KÀSZE-tézis helytállóságát is. Az első kimondja, hogy a formális hivatkozásállomány és a specifikus dokumentáltság csökkenve nővekedik a közlemények terj edelmének növekedésével; a másik azt mondja ki, hogy a közlemények minden terjedelmi kategóriájában léteznek gyengén, közepesen, erősen és nagyon erősen dokumentált közlemények. A három helytálló KÀSZE-tézis összefüggő együttese igazolt doktrínát alkot. The "Author's Effect of Showcasing" (AES) is the activity of publishing authors with which they shape by their own free will the formal reference stock of their communications, placing this stock into the showcase of science. This paper reports the results of a decisive control test of the existence of the AES, processing 1175 historically synchronous physics conference communications. Applying methods of bibliometrics and science philology, the manifestation of the AES phenomenon is demonstrated and analyzed in this theoretically most homogeneous domain of scientific literature.… [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past few years have brought radical changes in the Hungarian higher educational system. Similarly to other training programmes, the training in library and information sciences has been subject to significant modification too. Beside structural changes of the training, LIS departments and schools are striving to keep up with the technological requirements of the information age with syllabuses focusing on IT-related subjects. This tendency is justified on the one hand, since library services do have to keep up with the fast development of information technologies. However, we have to keep in mind that in order to train competent LIS professionals, the training programme must be founded on a solid, long term, progressive concept. In addition to developing IT skills, students need to get familiar with all the basic principles of library and information sciences. These principles have been somewhat neglected over the past few years in favour of the use of information technology tools, nevertheless, libraries are not able to provide quality services without them. Unfortunately there are a few areas of librarianship and related work processes that are missing from current LIS curricula or are only included as theoretical subjects. This paper demonstrates the shortcomings of the current training programmes and argues that structural modifications in the training system need to be followed by the improvement of the syllabuses too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional repositories are dedicated to store and preserve the intellectual property of the institution and are built on the principle of open access. The paper presents a Hungarian example, the case study of the institutional repository of the University of Debrecen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital Rights Management technologies intend to detect, hinder or block unauthorized use of digital works protected by copyright. Not only information professionals must get familiar with these technologies: DRM is becoming an important topic of discussion in the everyday life too. This paper aims to answer various questions that have emerged in connection with the practical use of digital works protected by any of the DRM technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contradiction between the theoretically unlimited access to information and the efficiency of information searching has been pressing researchers and IT professionals to enhance the collaboration of computers and human workforce in the processes of information and knowledge acquisition. The importance attached to information retrieval methods has expanded beyond the library environment, resulting in the increasing respect of the professional background of traditional information retrieval languages and in the utilization of their theoretical principles even by business organisations. Having set the objective of the quick and comprehensive searching of portal and webpage contents, the professionals engaged in the development of the so-called semantic or intelligent web are working towards the creation of a web-based open and distributed system, that aims to apply standard descriptive languages to the online information sources, and will reach its full potential when the automatic distribution of data becomes possible. New programs and methods are being developed with the collaboration of software engineers, and the milestones of the progress are reported on by VV3C working groups. The coordinated and computer-based development of various traditional and automatic cataloguing languages demonstrates remarkable achievements, however, automatic solutions are only provided by a few softwares. As far as computer-based classification tools are concerned, a group of experts in the theoretical issues of information sciences regard taxonomies and related tools as an easily adoptable classification system (a controlled vocabulary with a low level of hierarchy) that can be generated relatively quickly. Thus this paper primarily concentrates on taxonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Máté Kovács, professor of library sciences and a leading figure of Hungarian library policy, a commemoration was held at the Department of Library and Information Sciences of the Eötvös Loránd University. The current paper, focusing on the professional activities of Máté Kovács between 1943 and 1949 was presented at this event. Máté Kovács was the head of the National Council of Public Education, then after the termination of the council, he started to work for the Ministry of Education and Religion in 1945. He elaborated the draft programme of the modernisation of the Hungarian public educational system, The organisation of primary schools at a national scale was implemented under his direction. As a political state secretary, he was confronted with all the issues that emerged within the scope of the ministry, but his approach to developments was far more than administrative. In the field of higher education, he supported the idea of training young people to become highly educated intellectuals rather than one-sided professionals. His endeavours in library policy were directed at the re-organisation of public libraries and the setting up of district libraries. He raised the possibility of libraries with twofold function, serving as the school library and the local public library for the same population. He later became the Director of the Library of the University of Debrecen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The John von Neumann Digital Library and Multimedia Centre annually publishes the online discography of Hungarian CD-ROM publications. Between 1990 and 2005, 2831 CD-ROM products were published. This paper gives an overview of the characteristics of the 143 products published in 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]