Online services provided by NSZL during coronavirus pandemic

National Széchényi Library has a role of high importance in providing access to cultural heritage contents. In the current situation, we use communication channels, such as our website, social media site, etc., to draw the users’ attention to library contents which can be well-exploited by e-learning projects, e.g. http://www.oszk.hu/hirek/reszletezo-tanitson-tanulj-velunk.

Hungarian Electronic Library (Magyar Elektronikus Könyvtár) is a service maintained by the Hungarian national library. Its digital collection is accessible online for the general public free of charge. It is also one of the collections recommended to use for e-learning purposes.

Film series on learning dance at home, popular science contents written by our colleagues are parts of the series we launched in order to reach out to our users via social media.

Providing spiritual support for users is of high relevance in the current situation, therefore, our colleagues send friendly messages recommending poems, books and museum pedagogical games to those staying at home.

The Hungarian Library Institute (HLI) is part of the Hungarian national library. The Institute conducted surveys among the libraries to collect data on their activities maintained during the COVID-19 pandemic. Konyvtarak.hu central portal of libraries serving users) published the results of this data collection to enable users to inform themselves about the available services. HLI published interviews with librarians on its website, in which professionals reported about new ideas, practices developed in their institutions during the close-down. HLI collected information on international best practices and created a review on foreign national libraries’ reopening plans.

The main task of "RDA-HU" workgroup, set up by the representatives of NSL and several other institutions, is coordinating the implementation of the new national cataloguing standard based on RDA (Resource Description and Access). Workgroup members created detailed proposals for libraries intending to prepare for the transition process to RDA. Proposals include data cleaning and metadata enrichment, i.e. activities that can be done at home office when the cataloguing module of the library system is accessible online.

HLI launched a website to inform librarians about epidemic.The site includes information on the disinfection of library collections, international best practices, adjusting Hungarian copyright law, in order to facilitate digital use, trustworthy online sources which are available to anyone.