BLINKEN OSA - 2017 Research Room Statistics

General Overview
Despite the fact that 2017 brought many challenges with serious concerns for the future of Blinken OSA and CEU, statistical data concerning the operations of the Research Room show that OSA was not strongly affected by those unfavorable external events. We can only state that the pressure on the Institutions (CEU and OSA) did not lead to such drastic changes in trends and figures as one might have anticipated. In general, our figures are in line with previous years’ solid figures. While in some areas, such as the number of new researchers, we have a slight decline, we actually recorded considerable improvements in the number of requests, the number of documents and the number of digital copies. 

Visits and New Researchers

Table 1. General Data on days open, number of new and total researchers, and visits, 2014-2017

The figures in Table 1 illustrate that since 2015 OSA has witnessed a slight growth in the number of new researchers. The majority of students who visited OSA during the pre-session week at the beginning of September came back for their research, while this was not the case in the previous years when registration was “highly recommended”. The rate of 6.4 visitors per day was maintained in 2017 as well. The slight decline from 2015 (1419 visits) continued in 2017 (1361 visits); this trend can be explained by several factors, such as the abundance of digital content available online,  a change in discourse in academia most notably at CEU. The trend from previous years, i.e. slightly fewer visitors with longer research sessions continued (from 03:57 in 2016 to 04:07 in 2017 per one researcher.) 

The Composition of OSA Visitors

Table 2. The Composition of OSA Visitors by Institutional and non-Institutional, Domestic and Foreign Affiliation, 2014-2017

As already mentioned, the number of visitors to OSA is in slight decline, the reasons of which could be various and some of which have already been mentioned in a previous section.

In an effort to attract more researchers, the Research Room was open until 8:00 p.m. temporarily (two hours longer than normal) on Thursdays, from mid-October to mid-December. The turnout was not too impressive (altogether 17 persons used the opportunity over 8 Thursdays; about two thirds of late stayers were CEU students; about two thirds stayed only about an hour or so beyond the normal closing time; one person, a CEU student, was here on more occasions than one.)  and the practice was discontinued.

However, the overall low number of CEU faculty visitors to OSA definitely calls for renewed outreach efforts even though the number of CEU students was higher in 2017 than in 2016. A 4 year period shows considerable fluctuation, with growth in one year and then a sudden decline in another. If the average number of CEU students in the period 2014-2015 visiting OSA is 76, then the figure for 2017 would be very slightly below the 4-year average. Similarly, there is no particular trend regarding the number of Hungarian students. More striking is the constant fall in the number of foreign faculty as well as a rather slighter decrease in foreign students. One possible explanation could be the lack of funds and research grants for foreign travel. “Hungarian professionals” is the only group that remained stable: 4-year average of the number of visits by “Hungarian professionals” was 37.5 and this number has now increased to 47 (2016) and to 44 (2017).

In the last 8 years  the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA researchers have played an important part in our statistics as well as other students from partner institutions and universities (George Mason University, West Point Military Academy, Corvinus University, etc.). They  are all included in the “Students from Abroad” category. In 2017 alone OSA hosted 20 Visegrad Scholarship at OSA scholars, who came from 10 countries with the Visegrad 4 countries heading the list.

Requests, Documents and Digital Images

Table 3. Total and Per Day Number of Requests, Documents Requested and Digital Images, 2014-2017

The number of Requests per day grew considerably from 4.4 last year to 5.3 this year; furthermore, the number of documents/items in use rose from the three-year average of around 3,000 to almost double that figure in 1017. Similarly, the number of digital images – reproductions of documents by researchers themselves - rose by more than 100 percent in 2017. It seems that in 2017  researchers requested more archival materials than in previous years.

As before, the most often requested collections were those related to the Cold War and RFE/RL in particular. About 70 percent of all requested archival boxes come from this area. They were followed by the Human Rights collections (c. 20 percent) such as audio – video tapes from the International Monitor Institute, Records of the International Human Rights Law Institute Relating to the Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia and Records of the Physicians for Human Rights’ Bosnian Project. The third most common research area involves collections of the Central European University or/and history of the Open Society Foundation in the region.

Altogether, the unfavorable external events did not affect the activities of the OSA Reference Services negatively. Besides the slow growth in the number of newly registered researchers over the past three years, and a considerable growth in the number of documents and requests, not to mention the vast increase in digital reproduction, we can conclude that 2017 was a normally busy year, without major fluctuations in figures, except for the number of requested and delivered documents. Some groups of visitors at Blinken OSA should become a target for a careful and well designed outreach campaign.