Career Development Group Study Tour 2005.

The article focuses on the Career Development Study Tour for 2005, which was a two-country visit to Budapest in Hungary and Bratislava in Slovakia. A group of 16 library professionals visited five libraries in the two cities. The Budapest section was organized by the Hungarian Library Institute and the Bratislava section by Jela Steinerova, a library science lecturer at Comenius University. Further a brief history and works of different national libraries have been described. The National Szechenyi Library of Hungary was founded in 1802. It was Count Ferenc Szechenyi's private collection that established the framework for the library. In 1808 the National Assembly broadened the scope by setting up the Hungarian National Museum. Hungarian Parliament Library was built in 1902 and inspired by the Palace of Westminster in London--which is evident from the outside, and inside, where the heavy colors used by Pugin in London are everywhere, as is a small fortune in gold leaf. The Metropolitan Erwin Szabu Library is housed in two converted palaces. The two buildings have been connected during an enlargement, and the library is housed in both modern and historic rooms over 7 floors. The Municipal Library in Bratislava was one of several cultural institutions in Slovakia's capital city to be established in 1900. The Library's collection is sub-divided into six departments, which include non-fiction, fiction, music,