Hungary/ 4.2 Specific policy issues and recent debates  

4.2.11 New technologies and digitalisation in the arts and culture

Digitisation of Hungarian cultural heritage was declared a top priority in 2010. The former national film archive was upgraded to the Hungarian National Digital Archive and Film Institute – MaNDA, to act as the main base of the programme under the same acronym. Besides the original functions relating to cinema, MaNDA undertakes the co-ordination of the digitisation of all means of cultural expression, from printed material to museum objects. MaNDA will act as the main Hungarian gatekeeper towards Europeana – its challenge is one of the lowest national contributions to the digital collection of Europeana in the EU. Plans for the MaNDA programme include the establishment of a logistical centre in the city of Ózd in former industrial premises, where most of the actual digitising is supposed to be executed. The costs, estimated at about HUF 9 billion (ca. EUR 30 million), come mainly from the EU Structural Funds. Among others, MaNDA aims at connecting the cultural heritage in each Hungarian settlement  to smartphone users via GPS.

MaNDA has taken charge of the Digital Literary Academy that keeps digitised oeuvres of contemporary writers who make their works available on the Internet by contract. Created in 1998 at the Petőfi Literature Museum, this unique endeavour had the works of 68 authors in 2011. In return, authors receive a monthly allowance four times the value of the official minimum wage.

MEK, the Hungarian Electronic Library, launched in 1994 on a private initiative, contains more than ten thousand items (2012). Embedded into the National Széchényi Library, the project has maintained its community features (see also chapter 9.2). MaNDA has taken over the functions of co-ordinating the digitisation of cultural heritage from the John von Neumann Digital Library and Multimedia Centre Non-profit Limited Company which was founded by the culture ministry in 1997 for this purpose. Neumann Ltd is being liquidated and its main projects, NDDA and NAVA will be taken over by MaNDA.

The NDDA (National Digital Data Archive, Nemzeti Digitális Adattár) was founded in 2003 to collect the descriptive data (meta-data) of internet content in the Hungarian language or related to Hungarian culture.

The National Audiovisual Archive (NAVA) was established in 2004. NAVA acts as the legal deposit archive for the public and commercial television and radio channels that broadcast all over the country. NAVA plays the same role for electronic programmes as the National Széchényi Library does for printed publications or as the Hungarian National Film Archive does for Hungarian films. The NAVA collection can be freely reached on-line from several hundred "NAVA points", terminals in libraries, schools, etc. registered within the framework regulated by law (http://www.nava.hu/english/nava/index.php).

The on-going telematic development of the public library system has been another focus of attention and will receive significant additional resources from the EU Structural Funds during the actual seven-year period (see chapter 4.1).

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