A significant number of free-access Hungarian or Hungary-related e-periodicals can be found on the Internet. Their number is quite high compared to the number of open-access e-journals around the world. Free-access resources, however, are usually hard to retrieve, and even if found, they are not guaranteed to remain permanently avvailable.
EPA, as its full name indicates -'Electronic Periodicals Archive and Database' - has a hybrid profile. Its main aim is to collect information and open-access content from Hungarian e-periodicals. Its scope covers academic and cultural publications, technical, regional, church and school newspapers as well as continuing resources for recreational purposes. Typical web-related resources are also registeres, such as information gateways and public blogs.
For the most part, the EPA is a virtual collection, as the majority of the described e-periodicals are 'remote' resources, their publication and maintenance is outside of our control. The EPA strives to give up-to-date information about these publications. Our readers can find a small number of 'offline' resources in the database: these are mostly digitised vesrions of old journals or newspapers, which, though not available online, can be used in digital form on CD/DVD-ROM or in an institutional network.
The mainframe of the EPA service is the collection of free full-text e-periodicals, hosted here at the National Library's server. This is the electronic peridicals department of the digital collections of the Hungarian National Library. The EPA staff is responsible for the technical state and availability of these resources, marked as 'archived'. It is our purpose to improve usability and full-text search whenever possible.
The EPA is a library-oriented service, its structure is originating in the OPAC-tradition. Anyone, even with only a passing familiarity with library catalogues or web search sites will be able to navigate our services. More information on the background and the history of the EPA can be found in the dokumentumok section.