Elemér Kelemen as a Librarian

Abstract

Elemér Kelemen (1937–2022) is best known for his works on the history of education. His main research area was Hungarian education policy in the 19th and 20th centuries. During a decisive part of his academic career he also dealt with school libraries, library education, and bibliographical instructions. The study aims to present his achievements in this fields, and his relationship with the National Education Library and Museum (NELM). He started researching these topics in the 1960s and published scientific papers until the 1990s. In the 1950s, the communist leadership of the country shredded millions of books from Hungarian libraries, including school libraries. In the 1960s, libraries were made operational again and a new institutional structure was created. In the 1970s, teachers were expected to use more than just textbooks in their teaching and library education was added to the National Curriculum. Development of comprehensive visions for school libraries could have been witnessed in the 1980s, but the plans lacked critical thinking. NELM has played a key role in the development of school libraries since the late 1950s. Kelemen became involved in research and development in the 1960s. He considered that from 1960 to 1990, Hungary underwent a forced and contradictory modernisation process, which followed the Western changes, but in a specific Eastern way and therefore could not be successful. Kelemen believed it was crucial that trainings should produce teachers who can search the library efficiently and use the academic literature effectively. When he became director general of the NELM in 1990, he supported two main areas of the institution’s renewal: research into the history of Hungarian education and the development of a national pedagogical information system.