Based on the new Higher Education Act (2005) of Hungary, it is important to examine the organisational and financial structure of the academic library. Besides these basic issues, electronic content has a huge impact on the development of not only the organisational structure, but also the institutional partnerships and the internal work-flow. This paper deals with these three components, emphasising the importance of the academic library.
The paper offers a case study of successful library moves. The Central Library of the Corvinus University of Budapest moved its collection of 11,000 metres of shelving to the new building of the university in 2007. The key elements of the successful accomplishment of the project included careful planning, efficient management and modified logistic processes ensuring user comfort. The paper describes the main work phases of the project: the planning of new locations in the new spaces, the inventory process and the downsize of the collection, the public purchase procedure necessary for the implementation of the project, the new collection map of the library, as well as the ICT solutions supporting collection and stack management. As a result, the move was carried out with the most efficient allocation of resources and the collection was reorganized in a new, service-centered way.
The year 2007 was a challenging time for the Central Library of Corvinus University of Budapest. It moved to a new library building and went through an organisational restructuring at the same time. Consequently, the library management had to adapt its existing service policy to the new physical and organisational environment. Services are centred around the main goals of the library: supporting the teaching process and students' learning experience; enhancing support for research; supporting the University's growth and development; providing services to the public in order to bring benefit to the local, regional and national community. The most important new services and solutions are: flexible borrowing policies including course reserves, modern and attractive physical learning spaces, group study rooms facilitating independent and problem-solving learning, up-to date virtual learning environment through the library's website, knowledge management tasks for the university including building institutional repositories, targeted services for specific user groups, information literacy training in a modular scheme, launching a Library Liaison programme to establish an ongoing partnership with faculty in research and teaching.
During the past 25 years, the Central Library of the Corvinus University of Budapest was constantly going through organisational restructuring, in order to integrate new tasks and services. The most important factors that affected the organization of work were the changes of the higher educational system, the ensuing downsize of university staff, the new user requirements as well as the new library building opened in 2007. These challenges led to the complete restructuring of the organization in order to ensure the effective and efficient functioning of the library. The previously hierarchical structure was transformed into a knowledge organization based on internal and external collaboration and knowledge transfer. The reorganization was accomplished in one year.
A new historical research library was opened in autumn 2007 on the third floor of the Central Library of the Corvinus University of Budapest. The Library, founded as the library of the University of Economics of Budapest in 1948 had several legal predecessors: the Library of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Budapest (1850), the Library of the Department of Economics of the Hungarian Royal University (1925), and the Library of the Department of Economics of the University of Technical and Economic Sciences (1934). The current research library holds and makes available the historical items of the book collections of the above mentioned libraries, and also holds the original furniture and artefacts of these libraries. The most prestigious collection is the Chamber Library, founded in 1850. Between 1900 and 1904, under the direction of Ervin Szabo, the collection was developed into a high quality research library well ahead of its time. Its collection was opened to the wide public in 1901. The historical volumes were re-catalogued in 2006 in the framework of the Hungarian National Shared Catalogue project. The online cataloguing made it possible to access the owner stamps, ex libris and possessor labels of the historical books, which is a very important step made in the reconstruction of the history of the library collection.
Strategic planning and the possibilities of Hungarian university libraries are defined by the professional and institutional legislative environment of the country. By professional environment we mean library legislation and in the case of institutional legislative environment we refer to megatrends in higher education as well as the new Higher Education Act. With the ratification of the new library law, the role of libraries has changed in a positive way and the new legislation has provided new opportunities for library development. The new higher education strategy of the European Union led to the comprehensive modification of the Higher Education Act in Hungary in 2005. University libraries will have new tasks in the new system for the provision of information in Hungary.
The past decade has brought unprecedented changes in the functioning of libraries: automation, electronic resources, rising costs of books and journals, consortial purchases etc. Another area of rapid change is user needs. In order to set up user-centered services, libraries need to know their users. This paper gives an overview of the results of various international user studies. The conclusions show that for the great majority of students, computers and networked environment are of vital importance (many of them get familiar with computers at nursery school), no wonder they expect the same speed and relevance from library services. Efficient university library services are also a prerequisite for effective academic research. The article draws the attention to the importance of user studies which should become a general practice at Hungarian libraries as well.
'Ask the Librarian' is a service that allows contact with the librarian in order to resolve problems associated with using the library. Increasingly, packages are created with comprehensive contact services, using not only tools such as telephone or a traditional letter, but also electronic, ranging from instant messaging to providing complex systems to track requests. The service has been firmly established in highly computerized countries. In Poland, however, many libraries still do not have a separate service, or it has not been prepared well. University centers, associated with research and progress should take the lead in developing high quality services, including those associated with contact with the user. The authors selected six of the best Polish university libraries in order to present the level of services such as 'Ask the Librarian' in Poland.
The authors discuss barriers and obstacles encountered by visually impaired persons while accessing websites and standards for designing and building such websites so that they can be used by the visually impaired. The discussion is followed by the presentation of the results of research on the accessibility of Polish university library websites for blind and visually impaired users. Selected websites were tested with two methods: automated procedures and qualitative-heuristic approach. The analysis of research results proves that Polish university library websites are below international standards as regards their accessibility for visually impaired persons.
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