During the three-day long meeting the invited guests can get to know each other’s best practices and research results by the introduction of the Hungarian and international partners. Further aim of the program is to establish long-term cooperation.
Minority Support Centre (NEK)
From April 2010, the Network Department of Csorba Győző Library received the task of the late Base Library, then Department of Methodology and at last, the Regional Department by which it became responsible for the library supply of the ethnicities in Baranya. During springtime our Department reviewed the service which had once been successful but was asleep for years. We surveyed what tasks should be completed in order to ensure a high quality library supply for ethnicities in Baranya. We mapped the county ethnicity network, reviewed our catalogues and inventory books, and totalized the existing holdings of the county-town library and other units in settlements and schools.
A significant part of the holdings were the those of the late German Base Library but there are plenty of publications in Croatian language and documents on the Romani Persons written in Hungarian, ‘Lovári’ and ‘Beás’ languages. The task of reviewing, sorting and exploring the Croatian - Serbian-Croatian holdings consisting of more than 15 thousand items at the Mohácsi Jenő Town Library in Mohács also befell us. Unfortunately the town library of Mohács lacks the sources to manage Croatian documents thus the Department of Baranya County Network volunteered for the further management of these holdings and for providing a high quality service as did the colleagues in Mohács.
According to the data of predecessor Csorba Győző Library, 38 823 documents serve as ethnic library supply. At present the significant part of the holdings is placed in 27 settlements/educational institutes (the numbers of the library of Mohács is not included in the statistics). The value of the holdings augments by 500.000 HUF a year, by the freshest publications of German, Croatian and Romani documents (books, CD, DVD, CD-ROM). This source – and thus the documents – arrives to our institute under the gestorship of the National Foreign Language Library. At this point we decided that a review of holdings and a parallel asset disposal is necessary. We sought and found a solution. In the beginning of summer a person was successfully hired to manage these holdings. After the preparatory phase, the checking procedure of the holdings that serve as the base of library supply could finally commence in July. The holdings disencumbered of obsolete, damaged books were taken to the Knowledge Centre, to the Network Department. Along with the withdrawing process of scrapped documents and preparation of disposal reports, the retrospective conversion of these latent holdings has also started. The documents were processed into the Integrated Library System of the Knowledge Centre, Corvina’s OPAC. Document protection just as the holdings of the whole Knowledge Centre is perfected by the application of RFID stripes. After “exhibiting” the holdings placed at the department, our next task will be to review, sort and convert custody holdings at the 27 settlements. Along with the checking procedure of holdings, we’re also picking up the thread and rebuild our connections with settlements and bilingual educational institutes.
We are planning to place fresh and sought after documents to settlements/institutions that already are in or are going to enter into cooperation with us. These newfound connections offer inherent possibilities which go far beyond library supply such as cultural programs, author-reader meetings, and ethnic conferences. A great example of this is the joint venture of Csorba Győző Library and the Lenau House in order to provide the German inhabitants of Baranya with German literature. The agreement between our institute and Minerva Library in spring was built on this connection according to which we place the approx. 700 documents – mainly children’s and youth literature - we received from Lenau House as perpetual custody and 300 documents from the Ethnicity Supply Centre to Minerva Library. I am expressing my hopes that these more than 1000 books do much good for the library supply of the county’s German inhabitants.
Finally it can be argued that Csorba Győző Library is fully aware of the importance of ethnicity library supply, searching for sources, tender possibilities in order to supply the ethnic groups of Baranya County with documents written in their own mother tongues. After the elections we are seeking out the commissioners on minorities in local governments and the minority self-governments themselves with new ideas on ethnic library supply and with intentions of renewing our connections. All this is done by our library parallel to its well-infrastructured mobile library supply system, as we can reach even the minorities of small villages by relying on this service receiving normative subsidy, which aims for the settlements of the micro-region. Our newest project – the Library Bus –also serves as means for finding disadvantaged inhabitants with 21st century library supply and thus diminishing these disadvantages.
Our aims and tasks are crystal clear; we must seek out, build and cultivate good connections much like in the case of the custody agreement with Minerva Library.
Contact:
Eszter Csorba-Simon
E-mail: csorba-simon.eszter (at) baralib.hu
Telephone: +36 72 501 500 / 28035