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Changes in the reading habits as reflected by time-budget analyses

The author describes the social, economic and cultural changes of the last 20 years as reflected by the changes in reading habits. His statements are based on time-budget analysis in the years 1976, 1986 and 1993, and are compared on a European scale. During the changes in the 1990s there has been a substantial increase in the time to be freely utilized as regards the time use of the entire population, owing to unemployment. This surplus has been substantially overpassed by the time spent watching television, causing a decrease in the time spent on intellectual and physical activities. The time spent on reading has decreased almost with every stratum. Hungary is in a special situation, as despite the little spare time and the much time spent on watching television Hungarians spend still more time on reading than the inhabitants of countries in a similar situation. This was especially true in 1986 when Hungarian men came to the fourth place in the international ranklist of the total time spent on reading. The situation has changed by 1993.

As regards the reading of books, its time share is especially high in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Holland, Finland) only.

Reading and value orientation

The author calls attention to the function change of culture, with special regard to the role of reading materials in indicating value orientation. While in 1976-1986 those with a university/college education read considerable more fiction works, by 1993 the differences have almost ceased, their inclination for acquiring knowledge is not stronger than among those with a maturity exam. University/college education and a more definite taste to a certain degree limits the overrepresentation of light reading and popular novels. In rural towns almost three quarters of reading materials belong to light reading. The shortage of financial goods has been accompanied in the last decade by a decrease in the time spent on intellectual reproduction and a deterioration of the quality of reading materials.

State of the art and results of reading research in France

The author maps the major research activities from the 1970s to the 1990s. She cites the findings of a time-budget analysis in 1986, according to which the French spend ten times as much time watching television than reading books. She investigates the time spent on reading newspapers. From her lengthy analysis the data on reading structure have been extracted, can thus be compared with the findings of reading research in Hungary.

Visuality - the children's disease of our age

The author, a sociologist of art, discusses arguments and counter-arguments in her passionate discussion paper. She considers writing and reading, intellectual thinking and the exchange of complex ideas to be characteristic feature of adult existence. Our world reduced to images (television, teletext, film, cartoon, video etc.) is responsible for the impoverishment of language, for the limitations in speech. She is for adding a value to the "word" instead of visuality.

Modernization, information, telecommunication in the developing countries, with a view to Hungary

The author calls attention to the fact that according to demographic forecasts a more considerable majority of the world's population will live in the crisis areas of developing countries. The linking of computerization and telecommunication will in all likelihood deepen instability as the social, cultural and organizational preconditions for a technological revolution are lacking. He raises the utilization of Hungarian intellectual work, professional skills in developing countries, especially in the field of education and training.

Writing and reading on the network

The author is aware that the network means an efficient communication channel for many people. Characterizing electronic mail, discussion lists and the World Wide Web as the network implementation of hypertext he enumerates a number of phenomena determining the nature of writing and reading.

The future of journals

The author provides a short summary of the discussions at the conference entitled "The role of journals in the thinking of intellectuals in France and Hungary". From among the contributions of media specialists, journalists, editors she mentions those on the dual role of the Net, on the unbelievable speed of access, on the storage capacity far exceeding the imagination of librarians and archivists and enabling the creation of electronic archives.

Construction, Networks and New Technologies: interprofessional relations between librarians and architects

New technologies, in particular in the area of integrated automation and state-of-the-art telecommunications, bring tremendous changes day by day in the work of libraries. These changes have a direct effect on the appointments of libraries andl all new constructions of libraries as well as their modernizing alterations should be designed according to the requirements and needs of both new technologies and the information society. The importance ot this topic is highlighted by the fact that the French Cultural Institute of Budapest held a symposium on November 24 1998 entitled "Libraries, Architecture and New Technologies", with the participation of distinguished French and Hungarian experts representing librarians as well as architects. The article examine in detail the concluding session of the symposium, during which Mr. Pierre Tailhardat gave a lecture about some architectural aspects of the integrated automation process in the new National Library of France. Mr. György Major, one of the chief designers of the Katona József Public County Library of Kecskemét, spoke about his experiences as an architect in the most outstanding library construction operation of the last decade in Hungary. Mr. István Papp, deputy director general of the Szabó Ervin Metropolitan Library, overviewed the new technologies' impacts on functional-structural library systems and projected a great number of impressive slides about the modernizing reappointments and constructions in his library.

Human intelligence and artificial intelligence

Human intelligence and artificial intelligence

The short essay illustrates that the euphoria of some decades has calmed down.

Writing, image, oral culture and new technologies

Short report of a paper for a seminar held at the Denis Diderot University, Paris. It raises the idea of regional identity and universality, and discusses education becoming a sort of new "profession" due to the use of the Internet.

Nicolas ROUBAKINE: Bibliological psychology

Béla BÜKY: The interdisciplinary relations of Hungarian linguistics and psychology in this century

The cultural risk of the Internet