Collection of University History and Selmec Library of Historic Monuments

This library used to be the library of the ancestor of the University of Miskolc, which was first the Mining Institute founded in Selmecbánya in the year of 1735 and later the Mining and Forestry Academy. The Academy of Selmecbánya was the first institute for technical higher education of the world, its 2 legal successors (University of Miskolc and University of Western Hungary) are still functioning. 

 

The library of Selmecbánya founded in 1735 is the only technical and natural science library of Europe that remained in its intact, almost complete and original condition as it was founded in the 18th century. The library contains every significant mining and metallurgical literature from the 16th until the 19th century that helped maintaining the high level of education and research at the Academy already as from the beginning. Three quarters of the collection constituted by 45.000 pieces and collected during the period between 1735 and 1918 were moved to Miskolc. Almost six and a half thousand items of the collection may be seen in the museum room, in the very same library order as at the Selmec Academy in 1862. Guided tours may be requested in Hungarian, German, English, Russian and Slovakian language.