Outlines:
1886: the English Department at the University was founded by Professor Arthur Patterson
1994: the School of English and American Studies - including 5 departments - was established and moved to a new campus
1994: the Library moved to its present building, and united the collections of the original English Department, the Centre for Teacher Training, and the American collection of the Faculty Library
1995: setting up a CD-ROM network, as well as introducing an integrated library system called Horizon
The history of the library has always been connected to the history and changes of the English Department, known as the School of English and American Studies nowadays. The library of the English Department was founded in Pesti Barnabas Street, which has been the main university building until recently. The Department and its library were small in terms of student and faculty numbers, resources, and recognition due to historical and political reasons (German and Russian influences for decades).
In the 1970s and 1980s as the demand for English studies slowly began to increase, the size of the library was expanding and it finally moved to its former site at Ajtósi Dürer sor. The building of the library was not originally built for the English Department, but for the former College of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party and it functioned as a library. After the changing of the political system in 1989, the buildings on the campus became the property of the Ministry of Education, and in 1994 several departments, including the German Institute, the Department of Education in addition to the five departments of the School of English and American Studies (SEAS), moved in. When the individual departments formed the School in 1994, the collections of these units were merged together. This is how the unified stock of the library was created.
Until 2007 the SEAS Library shared a building with the libraries of the Faculty of Arts, the German Institute, and the Department of Education. In 1994 the SEAS Library occupied the First Floor of the building, consisting of a reading area with 70 seats, two offices, and stack areas. Unlike in other university and departmental libraries in Hungary, the bulk of the stock was placed on open shelves according to the Library of Congress Classification System.
Thanks to a successful application to the FEFA grant (Catching up with European Higher Education) in 1994-1995 the library participated in a project to set up a computer network for three Hungarian universities, namely the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, the Medical University also in Budapest, and the University of Miskolc, in order to purchase and install the integrated library system called Marquis (later Horizon) by an American vendor Dynix. In the meantime in 1995 a local CD-ROM network with 10 terminals and 2 servers was installed, and retrospective conversion was started with the help of students. For this purpose the Library of Congress CD MARC Bibliographic database was used in the first place, then the records were uploaded into the Horizon database. Item records are gradually created as workload permits.
Online cataloguing of our new acquisition started in February 1998, when the online public access catalogue became available for local use and the card catalogue was closed. Online circulation has been used since September 1998. In the future our aim is to include all types of library material (periodicals, audio-visual material, electronic databases) into the online catalogue, and eventually use all the modules of the system (Serials Control, Acquisition) according to the needs of library processes.
2002-2003: a computer laboratory called EISZ was set up, thanks to a significant national grant, with 10 terminals and a printer-scanner for promoting database searches such as EBSCO, Web of Science, Literature Resource Center+MLA Bibliography to begin with. Several training sessions for faculty members and PhD students were organized.
2003: the Library's homepage was created
2005: our online catalogue was included in the university-wide network, when the two Horizon databases at ELTE were merged. ELTE Libraries Catalogue is available at http://ek62.elte.hu/webpac-bin/wgbroker.exe?new+-access+top
2007: in February-April the Library moved to the Trefort campus, along with the Library of German Studies. Our new home is the glass covered courtyard at Múzeum krt. 6-8. The official opening took place on April 16, 2007. Pictures of the construction, the move and the facilities can be enjoyed in the Photo Gallery.
Written by Nóra Deák, Librarian, based on a student's essay entitled "The history and the present situation of the Library of the English and American Departments".
Page created by Nóra Deák