Library Consortia in Hungary

Abstract

During the last two decades many Hungarian libraries have developed considerably, beyond what was considered possible prior to 1989 and the beginning of events signaling the end of Communism in the country. Some of the modernization of library services has been realized through participation in cooperative agreements. Many smaller and larger consortia have been organized in Hungary since 1991. There are some consortia based around specific vendors, e.g. EBSCO and ProQuest, but the most important consortia were four state supported programs: FEFA (Orientation towards European Development Fund), OTKA (Hungarian Scientific Research Fund), EISZ (Electronic Information Service), and TÁMOP (Social Renewal Operative Program). Through these programs, access to the most important scientific and multidisciplinary databases was provided for the Hungarian academic and research community. They assisted libraries to create a well-functioning Information Technology (IT) infrastructure in addition to a rich collection of electronic sources. What has been achieved so far has been beneficial; however, an extension to the number of accessible databases would be advantageous. This might be possible if more government ministries were involved in the financing of a library consortium based on a national license. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.