A national archive frozen in place: the right reform for irreplaceable holdings.

Indoklás

The MTA Library is a national research library and the custodian of significant manuscript and archival holdings, including the Academy's historical collections and the Keleti Gyűjtemény (Oriental Collection). The 8,870.6 millió Ft operating line is not ordinary office overhead; for a research library of this kind it largely reflects acquisitions, database and journal subscriptions, digitisation, and the cost of conservation. A national archival and manuscript-custody function — the physical preservation of holdings that cannot be re-created if lost — is the kind of bounded, custodial mandate that the framework treats with caution: the holdings are irreplaceable, and abrupt defunding risks irreversible loss of cultural capital that no later appropriation can restore. That is a genuine reason against an Immediate Cut. It is not, however, a reason for indefinite real-terms growth. A library's collection mandate is finite and self-limiting; the digital-subscription component in particular is contestable and should face procurement discipline rather than automatic indexation. Holding the line at its nominal level lets real-terms erosion at typical inflation reduce its real claim by roughly 20-25% over a decade, which forces exactly the prioritisation — which subscriptions, which digitisation projects, which acquisitions — that an indexed budget removes the pressure to make. The custodial core is protected by the nominal floor; the discretionary acquisitions margin is disciplined by the real-terms decline.