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A memo sent to correspondents, friends and acquaintances
of The Budapest Observatory (BO)
in July 2001
Messages exchanged in these weeks often include references
to hot weather. So I need not do so. Enjoy your well-deserved vacations.
OSI information sector
surveys
The surveys, conducted by the Open Society Institute each year since
1996, are a unique source of information on the book sector in the new
democracies. Data were collected with an active cooperation of Soros Foundations
in these countries. An agreement has been made, that from this year on BO will
administer the survey, process and evaluate the findings.
Book
distribution
Some of these findings are already on our site.
See e.g. the one on book distribution.
At first glance, the differences in the supply
with bookshops are not very great. In east-central Europe an average bookshop
serves 12 thousand people; in eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, Moldova) 30
thousand, less than in the Balkans, where the same ratio is 43 thousand
inhabitants per bookshop.
On the other hand, sales figures show more
striking differences. 2/3 of books are reportedly sold in bookshops in
east-central Europe, against 1/8 in the east, where about half of books are
bought at side-walk desks and kiosks.
Web
The sitemeter that you find on our site is
rather imperfect. If we could exclude our own technical visits connected to
maintenance, we would gain more information on real visitors. Does anyone know
of an alternative counter - still free of charge?
During recent weeks 30% of visits could be
identified by country (beside Hungary). Here is their list:
Germany
6%
Korea
3%
Israel, Italy
2%
Lebanon, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, UK, Uruguay,
Canada, Belgium, Ireland 1%
And from our region: Croatia 2%, Poland,
Yugoslavia, Romania, Ukraine, Czechia, Bulgaria 1%.
Virus?
Yes, every now and then, but no harm so far.
Yet more and more suspicious messages come like "How are you? I need your advice
about this file." These we are afraid to open. If you really ask for BO advice,
be aware of our cautiousness and clearly identify your message.
Cultural
budgets in Hungary
In the last memo I referred to our project on
the cultural budgets of the Hungarian government.
In it you read that the share of cultural expenditure grew from 0,96 % in 1997
and 1,71 % in 2001. A few days later the statistical authorities announced that
the ratio of public spending on culture has been declining in the same period
with regard to the GDP. Government and opposition immediately started to discuss
this news with gusto, although none of the statements on either side has been
without a number of errors. Summer holidays of senior statisticians have
prevented BO to find out, what exactly they meant by "public spending on
culture". Nice puzzle.
Anyway, what is certain, is that the central
budget used to redistribute over 35% of the GDP before 1995, more recently it
has remained below 30%. Consequently, even an increasing cultural component can
keep pace with the GDP with difficulty only. Still, the government's cultural
spending has grown from 0,29% (1997) to 0,50% (2001) of the Hungarian GDP. Note,
however, that the bulk of the growth is capital investment, including
reconstruction of built heritage.
A must or
a muse?
It is too late if you encounter this weird
question for the first time. The list is closed. The organisers are (proud?
sorry?) to inform that no more registrations are accepted for this conference,
to be held on arts education in September in
Rotterdam.
The web site of the event reveals a few names
among the contributors, who represent our region: Andrea from Budapest, Corina
from Dijon (Bucharest), Dalia from Vilnius, and Vesna from Ljubljana.
Global cultural
pact
The issue is
important. How to reconcile free world trade and cultural diversity. A few weeks
ago participants were still being recruited for the second (and rather
expensive) conference of the International Network for Cultural Diversity,
engined by Canada. Time: September 21-23. Place: Switzerland, Luzern - as we
know it, Lucerne in the conference documents. The list of 36 speakers contained
one from our region at that time: Nina from Culturelink, Croatia.
You may be
more able than me if you seek actual news: both www.incd.net and www.ccarts.ca kept their secrets from me. They displayed lots of visual
design knacks instead, at the expense of my time (and telephone bill), a
frequent source of annoyance.
Volunteering in the
arts
Still too early for names of contributors to this year's Circle round
table conference, to be held in Newcastle between 2-4 November. Check the Circle site by the time you return from
the sea (or lake, or hills...). The subject is linked to the topic of the year, as
selected by the UN: volunteering.
Cultural
centres
Speaking of volunteering reminds me that we are
still missing volunteers to (co-) finance the planned comparative BO project on
cultural centres (houses, spaces, you name it) in selected European countries.
Nevertheless, a favourable development is that
the Institutul Intercultural Timisoara has volunteered to participate in the
project. Others might come to the same decision taking a closer look at the
project outline.
EU
enlargement conference
The preliminary programme can now be read on our web site. No names
still, although the draft list is getting momentum. 28 weeks are left to the
opening on 14th February (Thursday) and
the organisers may be influenced still, both on
contents and actors.
The Hungarian National Commission has made a
general pledge to take charge of one day's translation costs. This serves the
comfort of local participants, as the working language of the conference is
English: reflecting the rich diversity of the mother tongues of the speakers,
colourfully embellished or distorted by those substrata, but still English.
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