ArchivNet, the New Source Publishing Portal of the Hungarian National Archives

Ring Orsolya <ring@natarch.hu>

Magyar Országos Levéltár

Rába Endre <raba@natarch.hu>

Magyar Országos Levéltár

The development of the information society presents new challenges as well as outstanding new opportunities for the archives. A prime example of such opportunities for the Hungarian National Archives is the creation of ArchivNet (ANet). ArchivNet is a portal service for electronic publication of source material.

The real value of an archive is determined by the amount of information it conserves. It is worth emphasising that —of course with some obvious legal constraints —all the source material handled by the archives is open for the public. However, the publication of this information is quite difficult utilising only traditional techniques. That is probably why the archives are the least known public collections. The goal of ANet is to improve this unpleasant situation, and to make the source material held in the Hungarian National Archives available for a wider audience with the help of the Internet.

The portal is aiming to reach the following groups: professional researchers, the traditional and electronic media and, last but not least, the general public. The content and format of the articles published in ANet has been determined by bearing the target groups in mind. Our portal publishes documents dating back to years 1945–89. This period is quite likely the most interesting for those less interested in history, mainly because many of us have our own memories from these four decades. Moreover, the reading and interpretation of these documents do not require any special skill.

ANet publishes three types of articles: documents that can somehow be linked to current events either in Hungary or somewhere in the World, source materials which are related to an anniversary and finally, articles which are —using the most common sense meaning of this word— just “interesting”.

Archives are often criticized for not being able to answer to the challenges posed by the information society. ANet is hopefully an anwser to these critics.