gyűjtemények

Incunables The third most significant incunable collection of the country consists of 1205 titles in 1051 volumes. The book that is proven to be part of the collection of the University Library for the longest time is Epistolae ad familiares by Cicero (printed in Venice in 1487, inv. no. Inc.256), and presumably it got into the library between 1586 and 1589 in Znióváralja. The first catalogue extant from 1631 already lists a number of incunables, which could be purchased for educational purposes.

Antiqua (16th century) Collection The Antiqua Collection contains the foreign language books printed outside Hungary between 1501 and 1600. The collection consists of 10.352 prints in 7.503 volumes written mainly in Latin, German and Ancient Greek. The difference between the number of prints and that of the volumes comes from the custom of former possessors that they bound together some of their thematically connected books.

The periodical collection of the University Library consists of 12.000 titles in cca 207.000 volumes. The most precious part of the collection are the journals printed before 1800. (400 titles in cca 4.000 volumes). This ancient core of the collection contains foreign language journals (mostly German, English and French) and 18 Hungarian titles.  The entire collection of our library's journals is searchable in our online catalogue.    

Books The modern book collection of the University Library is one of the largest collections of the country, partly due to the fact that in the 18th century the library got a right for a mandatory deposit copy. Before 1949 the library collected materials from every field of science taught at the university. Since 1949 the it collects documents belonging to the humanities, its main fields of interest being history (especially medieval and early modern Hungarian and world history), philosophy and theology.

Codices The codex collection of the library consists of 185 codices, of which there are 137 Latin, 7 Arabic, 2 Turkish, 2 Ethiopian, 2 Persian, 13 Slavic, 6 German, 4 Greek, 4 Italian and 8 Hungarian codices. 14 of the codices are considered to be Corvinas (books from the famous 15th century library of King Mathias), and were donated to the library by Sultan II. Abdülhamid in 1877.

You can study the documents belonging to a special collection only locally in the Research Room with a valid borrower’s card, after filling out a research statement. More information about use of special collection

With its almost 2 million documents, the University Library is the third largest one in the capital. Until 1949 its collection interest covered works from all disciplines taught at the university, later it was limited to   medieval and early modern times world history, religion and history of religion.  Since then the library has nation-wide responsibility for the collection of publications in these fields.  Furthermore the library collects and stores