Hiripi Lajosné Mária Vágh is 80 years old.

Laudation

Mária Hiripiné Vágh spent all the 40 years of her career as a librarian in Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library. She started to work in one of district libraries of MESZL when she was 18.  She finished university studies and graduated during her first years spent with work. She began working in Reader's Service Department of the Central Library in 1962 where she compiled special bibliographies of social sciences and in the field of education.
In 1973, she was a founder member of Documentation Department of Sociology - today it is Sociology Collection - where she worked until she  retired in 1992.   
She was the founder chief editor of Sociological Information, bibliography of the literature of Hungarian sociology; its contents were the basic materials of the documentation of Hungarian sociology in the world  bibliography titled UNESCO International Bibliography of the Social Sciences for more than 10 years. She was an active participant in the development of computer database of the (special) bibliography. After retiring she  participated in great projects related to the bibliography of the literature of Hungarian sociology.

Her wide knowledge, great interest and open-mindedness as well as excellent language knowledge gave the base to make thematic and recommending bibliographies in some topics, on the basis of Hungarian and foreign special literature. 
Her public interest led her to two sociological topics which were considered as taboos even among sociologists in that time; they were the issues of roma people's condition and poverty. Her bibliographical compilations related to the issue of gypsies made and published (by the library) in the 1970s and '80s are the summaries of the most important sources of the period, even today.

She received Szabó Ervin medallion for her outstanding activity as a bibliographer in 1990.

We can say that she was an "expert" in the field of team building and networking, she had big circle of acquaintances among not only Hungarian and foreign sociologists and researchers but librarians as well. She was a prominent and well-known person among her contemporaries in Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library. Due to her expertise, collegiality and affectionate assistance (to beginner librarians) made her quite popular among professionals and everyone who contacted her.

Erika Karbach
head of department
MESZL;  Sociology Collection