Interpretation of Interpretations

Interpretation of Interpretations

Scholar Librarians, Scholar Predecessors
Edited by Edina Zsupán
NSZL–Gondolat, Budapest, 2015.
[Bibliotheca Scientiae & Artis 7., Series edited by László Boka], 216 pages
ISBN 978 963 200 641 3

Language: 
Hungarian
3 500,- Ft
Available
Teljes bibliográfiai leírás/Library catalogue item

The seventh volume of the Bibliotheca Scientiae et Artis series focuses on the interesting topic of the interpretation of interpretations, including our relation to ancient scholars and their legacy. What makes the topic relevant is that any elaboration or organization of an unexplored and disordered material involves a sort of interpretation which will later influence the future of the source group, and to which the researchers of the library will have to adapt themselves somehow. The writings of this collection elaborate upon the sophisticated relation between the source (the librarian-scholar) and the museum expert, the scholar of old times and the present condition of the topic of the research, with special regard to the successive interpretations due to physical intervention (wrapping, ordering, division) that build upon each other.

„Theoretical reflections generally hardly expose the function of the archives. On one hand because theorists rarely know closely the actual functioning of the institutions related to the conservation of the material, and on the other, because it is easier to consider the circumstances of conservation to be interpreted as axiomatic, without raising questions about them, as this way at least the dilemmas related to the starting point can be spared. However, it is worth considering that as early as this very beginning there are already strong interpretation aspects present: not even the archive is a transparent medium, let alone something that simply keeps the sources available for us. [...] Difference has to be made obviously between the interpretation gestures of a personality who leaves conscious marks on his legacy, and the necessary reconstruction of personality marks from a disperse material; but the point is exactly that even an entirely conscious will of a legator can get re-interpreted during the ordering of the archive.” (Quotation from Márton Szilágyi: Archiving and canonization. Prolific dilemmas of the afterlife of the Kazincy legacy.)

Bibliotheca Scientiae et Artis

National Széchényi Library holds its yearly internal conference, the Research Session to give chance to its researchers to present and discuss their topics, and facilitate a scholarly dialogue between the experts. The selected and edited material of these thematic conferences has been being published from 2010, as volumes of the book series Bibliotheca Scientiae et Artis. The series editor is László Boka, the Director of Research at National Széchényi Library, and each volume is edited by the curator of the related Session.