The Department holds the largest collection of Hungarian cartographic materials from the earliest medieval prints to the latest CD maps. It also keeps as its cherished treasures a number of foreign medieval maps.
Cataloguing / processing
The adaptation to the internationally introduced ISBD/CM (International Standard Bibliographical Description) can be mentioned as the first and foremost change in the life of our Map Department during the last four years. Our Department had to make pioneering work with preparations for the adaptation of this standard in Hungary. Without the adoption of ISBD/CM our collection would not have been able to continue its international datachange contacts. At cataloguing in the Szchnyi Library, the DOBIS/LIBIS computerized integrated library system has been used up to the present. It is hoped that from the second part of the year 1999 the AMICUS integrated library system will be introduced. From this time onwards the Map Departent's materials will be processed by computer following the norms of the AMICUS system. According to our plans, not only the newly incoming materials are going to be read into the database but parallelly those earlier cartographic documents published before 1850. The nation-wide introduction of the ISBD/CM standard will probably have to wait until the year 2000.
Changes in collection policy
According to a decesion made in the Széchényi Library, cartographic CD-ROM documents will belong to the Map Department's field of interest; however, the services on these materials will also be accessed through network.
Conservation policy
The conservation of maps witth regard to their often specially large sizes, is an important and often hardly surmountable problem. Having made encouraging tests, we have prospects for scanning and recording in CD of the most valuable parts of our holdings. This will open the possibility for reaching the most valuable items of the Collection through the net.
Exhibitions
From 1995 onwards the exhibition series titled "Lovely Hungarian Maps" has been organized each year by the Map Department. These exhibitions offer a good survey of Hungarian cartographic products of the previous year. Apart from that the Department prepares 2-3 temporary exhibitions from its materials annually. Further information: The prospectus of the Map Department and its collection can be reached on homepage http://www.oszk.hu at "Special Collections".
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