UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF
EÖTVÖS LORÁND UNIVERSITY

1. General background

The University Library of Eötvös Loránd University is one of the oldest and even now recently active public library in Hungary. The genesis of the University's library is traceable to a jesuite college's library which was founded in 1561. The University was founded by Pázmány Péter, the Primate of Hungary in 1635, in Nagyszombat (now Trnava, Slovakia.) The university and the library - with more than 15 000 volumes - moved to Buda in 1777, and in 1784 to Pest.

2. The Building

Today's palace of the library was erected between 1873-76, as the first library-building in Hungary which became open to the public since than. Its most famous part from architectural and artistic point of view is the main reading room with frescoes and wallpaintings of Charles Lotz, the greatest Hungarian fresco painter of that time. The whole building's renewal had finished in 1999, with the reconstruction of courtyard.

3. Library network

The University Library is the central library of Eötvös Loránd University; in this sense it is responsible for the departmentals, faculty and branch library system's professional work.
More than 50 libraries form the document basis of the university, several of them are regarded as national scientific collections, with more than 100 000 volumes.

4. Holdings, special collections

We have 185 codices, among them one should mention first of all 14 codices of the Bibliotheca Corviniana, a Greek Gospel compiled in Constantinople in the 10th century, 1150 incunabula and 2600 old Hungarian printed books, published before 1711. We have 7100 volumes (9600 titles) from the 16th century, almost 11000 volumes from the 17th century and 45000 volumes from the 17th century. The oldest manuscript is an 8th century Beda fragment.

Rare Books Department (RBD)

RBD collects all documents printed in non-Hungarian language outside the country between 1501-1800, whose author is not a Hungarian person. This collection consists of three parts: the Antiqua (16. century), the Baroque (17. century) and the Enlightenment (18. century) collections. These approximately 65000 volumes constitute significant part of the museum stock. Most of these volumes were acquisited before the secularization of the University Library (1777). The University Library was founded by Miklós Oláh, the archbishop of Esztergom, as the library of the jesuit college in Nagyszombat (1561). In the first decades the library worked in Nagyszombat, in Znióváralja and in Vágsellye. Finally this collection became the library of the university, founded by Péter Pázmány, the archbishop of Esztergom in Nagyszombat (1635). The college library, which collected ancient authors and theology in the beginning, gradually became the university library collecting history, geography, law, natural sciences, mathematics, medicine. At the end of the 17th century the University Library had already 6000 volumes. Thanks to the Jesuit Order's efficient policy of education and library, significant part of library was new scientific literature acquired already in the year they were printed. After the dissolution of the Jesuit Order (1773) the university (and observatory, press and library) became state institution: Hungarian Royal University. Parallelly to secularization the books of jesuits and other dissoluted orders got into the possession of the university, which moved from Nagyszombat to Buda (1777), later to Pest (1784), the Ferenciek square. The present building was opened in 1876, when the first special collections: Incunabules, Manuscripts, Old Hungarian Prints were established. In the 1950's, the University Library got pre-selection right to the books of violently dissoluted orders, thus the museum stock increased by more than 10000 volumes.

The RBD was established in 2000. The librarians of RBD developed three new collections separating the documents printed between 1501-1800 by centuries. At present 7200 Antiquas, 11000 Baroques, and 45000 Enlightenment volumes are preserved by RBD. The rare books collection was desinfected, the 16-17-centuries stock was cleaned, and the binding of more than 100 antiquas (Gothic, Renaissance) have been restaurated since 2003. The electronic inventory-book was finished in 2002, we established a register of concordance which collects all the early signatures of each book during the last 130 years. All 9600 records of the electronic inventory-book has been converted into our integral library system, called Horizon (2004). We process not only the bibliography, but we present several data of each copy including identificated provenance, binding, possible lack in the Horizon-database. According to the CERL Thesaurus recommendations we unificated the authority forms of imprint places and of imprint names with biographical dates and activity notes. Parallelly to this process we work ont he electronic inventory-book of the Baroque collection, of which 3000 records were converted to Horizon, so it is accessible for everybody together with the Antiqua collection (OPAC). We also finished digitalization of the title page of the first 2000 Antiquas, which is also accessible in the Bibliotheca Antiqua Digitalis.

5. The catalogues

The Library is equipped with a complete catalogue system constituted by upwards of 30 catalogues. The basic descriptive catalogue conveys information about the entire book stock of the library from the year 1501 up to the present. Our traditional descriptive alphabetic catalogue is on national standard cards, it contains the bibliographical descriptions of the books acquired since 1925 or recatalogued since then.
The books acquired or recatalogued since 1949 are made accessible by two diverse subject catalogues: one is prepared according to the rules of the Universal Decimal Classification, the other is an alphabetical subject catalogue devoid of any systematizing modifications. A series of special catalogues are conveying to the reader informations about the special collections of the library: the alphabetical and the subject catalogues of the reading rooms, reference library and the periodicals. All the special collections have their own catalogues: catalogues of the codices, manuscripts, incunabula, old Hungarian books, dissertations and so on.

In 1993 the University Library of Eötvös Loránd University in cooperation with three other libraries, namely the Central Library of the Miskolc University, the Central Library of the Faculty of Humanities at Lorand Eötvös University and the Central Library at Semmelweis Medical University purchased the integrated library system Horizon, then supplied by Dynix.
Our database contains 600 000 item records, 340 000 bibliographic records, and 430 000 authority records at the moment.
There is also a direct link to access the online catalogues of the Central Library of the Miskolc University and the Central Library at Semmelweis Medical University.

6. Services

Over and above the traditional library services, such as lending, interlibrary loan, copying and verification of bibliographical data, during the last few years we have developed our reference and information services, based on modern technical tools. The Electronical Information Service would like to be a gateway to the world of virtual information, including multi-level linking to databases, e-text archives, online copies of printed documents, electronic-only materials, CD-ROMs. The University Library is a member of the "Hungarian Online Librarian" virtual service, wich was launched in September 1999. This is an online reference service of Hungarian librarians, its purpose is to enable reference librarians to help information seekers through the internet. All the Hungarian university libraries provide access to hundreds of scientific periodicals, both in printed and electronic form which you can find only in these institutions in Hungary.