Kály-Kullai, Károy
Károy Kály-Kullai (1954– ) is a librarian and one of the creators of the popular music collection in the library at Rottenbiller Street in Budapest (the branch library of the Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library/Fővárosi Szabó Ervin Könyvtár, FSZEK). He was also the initiator of the social service offering support for drug addicts, which worked in cooperation with the music collection.
Kály-Kullai graduated as a Hungarian-Russian teacher, but his interests soon turned to research on drug addiction and mental hygiene. He worked as a librarian between 1981 and 1992. He then served as a leader in the branch library at Rottenbiller Street. He and his colleague Péter Hont began to collect popular music recordings and created a unique collection in the 1970s.
In 1984, he was given an opportunity to join a health culture research program, and as part of this program he did interviews with drug addicts in a hospital. In the course of this work, he realized that he wanted to do more than participate in discussions or pursue research. He also wanted to help people suffering from drug addiction. The topic of drug addiction was one of the suppressed taboos in the Kádár period in Hungary. He combined his efforts as a social worker who dealt with people dealing with drug addiction with his interest in music and his work in the library. Kály-Kullai first obtained practical experience in this field, and later he studied the theoretical background. Island Club (Sziget Klub), who offered support for this work, began to function as a foundation in 1989.
References
Trencsényi, Zoltán. "Mélységi felderítő." Népszabadság Online, July 15, 2013. http://nol.hu/mozaik/20130715-melysegi_felderito-1400103.
Last edited on: 2019-02-18 14:44:10
