Deputy heads of the Library of Parliament (1881–1991)
Part I.
Abstract
The author, who worked at the Library of the Hungarian Parliament for 42 years and was head of the access services department for 25 years, has previously written about the activities of the institution’s directors in library journals and in a monograph as well. In this paper, he outlines the career of the deputy directors by examining two significant periods in the history of the library, which is still in operation today. The first period lasted until 1950, when the Library Committee, a permanent unit of the House of Representatives, which had played a key role in the oversight and management of the library for eight decades, was abolished. In the second era, formally from 1952 to 1991, the library remained in the building of the Parliament, but was removed from the parliamentary organisational framework and placed under the control of the Ministry of Culture, and we can follow the life of the library through the personalities of the deputy directors. (In the short transitional period from 1950 to 1952, when the oneparty dictatorship was already well established and the Presidential Council took over the majority of the powers of the Parliament as a new body, the preparation for the second era was actually taking place.) In the 110 years examined by the paper, the second men of the Library’s leadership have often played a very important role, first of all in the development of a cultural institution that provided information to the deputies and then to the public at large. Many of them also made their way to the managerial position. The negative role played by deputy directors, who had a detrimental influence on the life of the prestigious library, is also discussed. The deputy directors are introduced through brief biographical sketches and portraits of the heads of the bodies that oversaw the Library of the Hungarian Parliament (the two heads of the Library Committee in Part I were the President and the Clerk-Recorder, and in Part II the Minister was the main person in charge of the ministerial control).
