Centuries have left their mark on us – the Selmec Monument Library has opened

The collection, which reopened on Researchers’ Night, is part of the University of Miskolc’s ancestor, the Mining and Forestry Academy founded in 1735 in Selmecbánya (Schemnitz, now Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia) in 1735, can now be viewed by interested visitors at the University of Miskolc Library, Archives and Museum.

In the museum hall, nearly 7,500 items from the collection can be viewed in the same library order in which they were compiled at the academy in 1862. The books are grouped together in what is known as “Selmec binding”: brightly colored labels on the spines of the books indicate the 12 different subject groups used at the time, ranging from mathematics, chemistry, and physics to various mining and metallurgy textbooks.

The collection includes chemical-physical, mathematical, mining and metallurgical journals acquired from the second half of the 18th century, as well as manuscripts by former professors of Selmecbánya, which are clear evidence that the academy and its library were actively involved in international scientific life , said Prof. Dr. Zita Horváth, rector of the University of Miskolc, at the reopening of the historic library. She recalled that when planning the renovation of the university library, the institution set itself the goal of being able to perform public collection tasks in addition to its classic library duties. The digitization of specialist books of museum value is underway, she said, and thanks to this, the treasured items in the collection will soon be available in electronic form.

From Selmecbánya to Miskolc

Following World War I and as a consequence of the Treaty of Trianon, which redrew Hungary’s borders, the library of the Selmecbánya Academy of Mining and Forestry moved to Sopron in the spring of 1919, together with the academy itself. After the University of Heavy Industry was founded in Miskolc in 1949, the mining and metallurgy departments gradually moved from Sopron to Miskolc between 1949 and 1959. The library also moved with the institution: three-quarters of the approximately 45,000 volumes from the Selmecbánya academy between 1735 and 1918 were transferred here. The Selmec Monument Library, as Europe’s only 18th-century technical and natural science library that has remained intact and almost complete, enjoys museum protection.