Hungarian National Digital Archive • MaNDA database

Secrets of winter

It is true that winter arrives with the longest night of the year, the winter solstice, in the astronomic sense. It comes at the end of December in the north of the equator, but according to the common conception, if weather is cold enough winter is already here!
Behind the camera: Sándor Bauer

Who is a photographer? An artist, who creates a new reality, or the one who documents it? Maybe the one, who modifies it according to their or others’ tastes? Probably all of them a little bit. This week, we have selected Sándor Bauer’s photos, whose life-work is exciting not only because he was a professional photographer, but also because he worked during the soft dictatorship of the Kádár era. Did he take propaganda photos? Naturally! Besides that, he shot many curiosities too. Café waitresses serving finely roasted cream coffee, a Fabulon-girl posing on the Fishermen’s Bastion and Mátyás Rákosi.
Who laughs last… - Laughter philosophical disquisitions

You laugh when you perceive something funny, if you recall an amusing event, if you are in the middle of a happy moment, if you enjoy something, feel embarrassed, feel uneasy or want to be sarcastic. Lots of positive and negative things can result in laughing, smiling, tittering. As it is a complex process, it has been examined in many ways from medicine to philosophy. We have collected some points of interest from these.
Wash yourself cleverly – Time travel in hygiene I.

‘Have you washed your hands?’ – a familiar motherly warning from our childhood often comes to our minds before meals, especially, when we transmit this wisdom already as parents. In the recent decades, nobody disputes the importance of personal hygiene any more or puts the question if our flat has a bathroom. Washing your body is a basic part of the body culture including both cleaning your body and your clothes.
Beauty and beast, magic spaces, skulls and roses – The origin of ex libris theme world

Beyond introducing blazons, landscapes, street views, interiors and style world of ancient ages, bookplates reflect their values, ideas and culture as well. Although the classification of the theme world of bookplates is not an easy task – because of their variety -, it is not an impossible mission. We are going to highlight some of them, along the definition of the main bookplate theme groups, and reveal the cultural background and historical origin hiding behind the imagery.

Virtual exhibitions

Besides searching and browsing digitized cultural contents, visitors can view thematic virtual exhibitions from the records of MaNDA’s database, which are widened weekly. Our aim with the exhibitions is to introduce the cultural contents of the database in a new context, in a way that they would never be in the same virtual room otherwise, due to their spatial, legal or formal features. You can see our former exhibitions under this menu.

Partner institutes

Establishment of Europeana

During the period of the Swedish EU presidency in April 2001 in Lund, representatives of the then 15 Member States formulated their demand that a breakthrough in the field of cultural digitisation was necessary. One of their most important issues was that a cooperative forum should be created in order to put cultural digitisation in the European dimension and the accessibility and visibility of the European digital cultural heritage must be promoted.