National Széchényi Library - Collections

Collections

• Hungarian publishing houses printed copies for every printed material:
  • publications and prints of any kind produced in Hungary
  • works published abroad in the Hungarian language or written by Hungarian authors.
  • non-book materials (sound recordings, video materials, electronic documents, etc.);

• 8 million items comprising :
  • 2.5 million books
  • 385,000 volumes of serial publications (newspapers and periodicals)
  • 270,000 written and audio music documents
  • 1 million manuscripts
  • 200,000 maps, including the Tabula Hungariae, which was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2007
  • 320,000 pictures and engravings
  • 3 million posters and small prints.
  • microfilm copies of more than 272,000 documents.

• Collection of Early Books
  • the first book printed in Hungary, the Chronica Hungarorum ("Chronicle of the Hungarians"), which was printed and published in 1473
  • 8,600 copies of works published before 1711
  • 1,814 incunabula dating from the first century of book printing
  • the oldest existing text in Hungarian: the 12th century Funeral Sermon and Prayer is the first known continuous prose text in Hungarian (and in the Uralic language family as a whole).
  • the first known Hungarian poem (Old Hungarian Lament of Mary the Virgin)
  • the oldest surviving manuscript of the first Hungarian law-book (Decretum Sancti Stephani Regis, "Decree of Saint Stephen the King")
  • 35 Corvina codices from the library of King Matthias Corvinus.