The order interface of Mikes Kelemen Program has been renewed

 

The order interface of Mikes Kelemen Program, now in its seventh year, has been renewed.

Organized by the State Secretariat for National Policy, National Széchényi Library and the National Archives of Hungary, the program was launched on January 1, 2014, in line with the ideas worded in the Final Declaration of the 3rd Meeting of the Diaspora Council.

The program focuses on saving hungarica documents (library and archive materials) accumulated in the Western diaspora from destruction by placing them in public collections within and outside the borders of Hungary after repatriation. The program was launched in 2014 at the request of Hungarian organizations of the diaspora in the Hungarian-speaking communities of North and South America and Australia. Materials were gathered first at collection points, while in the later phases of the program, they were collected by posted researchers who prepared the donations for delivery.

National Széchényi Library accepts the shipments in a warehouse reserved for the program (so far approximately 260,000 documents have arrived). Of the received stock, NSZL mainly complements its hungarica collection (roughly 8% of the material enriches the collection of NSZL), and the remaining part is offered to libraries within and outside the borders of Hungary.

The recommendation began in April 2016 with the publication of weekly selection lists via the official website of National Széchényi Library. Experience gained over the four years has made it possible to create a modern, database-based order interface that is well adapted to user needs.

The developments had two objectives:

• on the one hand, to enrich the offered items with as much information as possible, thus facilitating the decision of the partners when placing their order,
• on the other hand, more emphasis has been laid on making the order process more transparent and smooth: the ordered items can now be tracked, thus making their delivery more scheduled.

We have also implemented a number of minor amenities. The filtering criteria for the lists have been expanded, it is already possible to build desiderate lists, so if customers have not received an item from the current list, they can request notification of its reappearance.

Thanks to the new developments, we can not only offer books and music, but we could also start offering one of the most valuable parts of the program, the periodical stock.

The order interface (in Hungarian) is available here https://mikesprogram.oszk.hu.