ICOM Conference on Museum Aggregation in Budapest

ICOM Hungary in cooperation with the Hungarian National Museum held an international conference on museum aggregation on the 11 March in the Hungarian National Museum.
The diversity of lecturers from Holland, Germany, France, Poland and Hungary stood as an example of the necessity of cooperation between the European nations. To sum up the challenges and future plans of the international aggregation, Mr Henning Scholz, representative of Europeana, the Central European aggregator service provides all the necessary material, such as guidelines and editorial tools to support their partners. He also emphasized some key problems of the majority of databases, for example, lack of adequate vocabulary and multilingual websites or the possible loss of data.
Afterwards, the audience got the chance to have a glimpse into the policies and processes of German, French and Polish museums and cultural institutes. The experiences, views and plans they shared could serve as starting points and clues for the Hungarian digitisation projects.
In the afternoon, acknowledged Hungarian aggregators took the floor. Mr Etele Szüts reviewed the work of Forum Hungaricum together with the tasks of the Hungarian National Digital Archive, while Mr Árpád Maczelka presented the aggregational processes in Hungary’s largest national library and Mr Zoltán Szatucsek reviewed developments in the Hungarian National Archive.
The 1404/2017. (VI. 28.) Government Regulation appoints the Hungarian National Museum as the national aggregator to supervise and coordinate the digitization of collections. The head of the department of the The National Centre for Museological Methodology and Information (OMMIK), Ildikó Sz. Fejes introduced MuseuMap.hu where the uploaded data can directly be available in Europeana, on demand. New partners with more digitised objects are the main goal of the very near future.
The Hungarian professionals agreed on the importance of cooperation and effective communication through which it would be easier to solve the problematic issues and overcome all the challenges presented in the field of Hungarian aggregation.

 

 

Photos: Dávid Kádár