The University Library is the third biggest library in the capital city and the eighth in the country.
The collection included works related to all disciplines taught in the university by 1949, later it was limited to philosophical, general psychological, middle and modern universal history, religious history and religious studies. We collect and preserve the ELTE-protected dissertations, documents related to the history of ELTE, manuals, dictionaries, scientific and literature books for research work, in addition to Hungarian, in several foreign languages. All of the books under the age of 60 can be borrowed from the core collection if it is not prohibited.
The Library digitalized and made accessible the base catalog which contains more than one million registers in 2011, for the Library's 450th anniversary.
The basic (old) catalog is an alphabetical descriptive catalog, which is recommended if neither search in the online catalog nor search in public catalogs leads to results, and either the name of the author or the work are known. It also explores the literature of individual authors, but only in monographs. Does not contain analytical exploration (articles, studies) and is not suitable for thematic searches.
The catalog of the University Library is unique in the history of Hungarian libraries, and its present form was acquired in 1875. The traditional book-based catalogs were then revised to build a catalog on the labels. Link to the old catalogue