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Libraries

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The CEU Library

The CEU Library has 2,000 square meters of open access area comprising four separate reading halls and a Multimedia Library. Thirty computers with access to online and CD-ROM databases are available for students, faculty, and staff members in the reading areas. The CEU Library collects materials in the fields of the social sciences, art and literature, business studies, economics, environmental science, gender studies, history, international relations, legal studies, medieval studies, philosophy, and political science.
Detailed information about the library rules, services, collections, and electronic databases is available on the library website at www.library.ceu.hu as well as in the CEU Library Short Guide.
Rules of Membership
All CEU students are automatically eligible for full membership in the Library, but they are first asked to register at the Circulation Desk and to participate in an introductory library tour. Student memberships expire at the end of the academic year, unless otherwise requested by their departments.
Contact Information/Opening hours
Address: Budapest, 1051, Nador utca 9.
Phone: (36-1) 327-3099
Fax: (36-1) 327-3041
Email: library@ceu.hu

CEU-ELTE Medieval Library

Based upon an agreement in 1992 between Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE) and CEU, the bulk of the Medieval Collection is housed at the central building of ELTE and functions as an affiliated library to the CEU Library. It is open to the general public and supports the scholarly work of the students of both universities.
The main aim of the CEU-ELTE Medieval Library is to collect publications on medieval Europe with special emphasis placed on source publications, translations of medieval texts, the medieval history of Central and Eastern Europe, and the interaction between the Byzantine civilization and the West. The library presently holds about 13,000 items in its collection.
Contact Information:
1088 Budapest, Muzeum krt. 6-8, 1st floor, Rooms 149-150.
Contact Librarians at ELTE: Agnes Havasi and Judit Majorossy
Phone: (36-1) 485-5200 or 411-6900/ ext. 5139, Email: medlib@ceu.hu
Curator: Balazs Nagy; Phone: (36-1) 327-3052.

The Multimedia Library

Established as a joint project of the CEU Library and the Center for Academic Writing, the Multimedia Library is a learning resource for language improvement and individual study. Video consoles, tape recorders, DVD players, and multimedia PCs are available for members' use. The Multimedia Library collection contains DVDs, CD-ROMs, tapes, discs, videocassettes and language books, all of them are searchable through the OPAC. The Multimedia Library is located in the basement of the "Small House" (library office building) and is accessible through the reading halls.
More information on all the CEU library's resources and services is available at: CEU Library website

Open Society Archives

The Open Society Archives (OSA) is a complex institution: not only an archive, but also an educational, research and documentation center, which has an exhibition hall of its own. OSA was established in 1995 with the purpose of saving, processing and making publicly available the materials of the Research Institute of the legendary "enemy" Radios: Radio Free Europe and the Radio Liberty. Since the start OSA's collection has grown continually and today OSA is recognized as one of the largest archives on Communism and Cold War, with the most significant Human Rights collection in the region.

Its holdings, 7,000 linear meters by archival measure, include in the first place the records of the Research Institute. The Institute collected background material for the programs that were actually broadcast between 1952 and 1993: clippings from the socialist press, transcripts of interviews with emigrants and tourists from the eastern block, transcripts of the daily news broadcasts of the socialist radios, samizdat publications smuggled out of the region, and, also, postcards sent to the Radio's music editors. OSA's holdings also include the documents of the International Helsinki Federation; the background materials of the famous, London-based journal of the freedom of speech, Index on Censorship; the research documentation of Physicians for Human Rights, an international group of doctors who excavated the mass graves in the Balkans. OSA holds audiovisual materials, too. Some of these are the products of its own research, like the Balkan Monitoring, which includes parallel recordings of the television news programs in the war-weary former Yugoslav countries, or the complete recording of the Iraqi and Kurdish television programming in the days immediately before and after the intervention. Several audiovisual collections were donated to OSA, such as Peter Forgacs's home movie collection, a unique record of domestic and everyday life between the 1940s and 1970s, or the world's largest documentary film collection on genocide, compiled by the International Monitor Institute. In 2003, OSA became the only Central European location where the entire database of the 20 million entries and a selection of one million images from the archives of the Communist International are accessible.

OSA's own library has a rich collection of books, periodicals and microfilms published in the region and in the West. Some of the subcollections are unique of their kind, such as the Russian press collection from the perestroika period, the collection of Polish samizdat publications, the documentation of the Prague Spring or the diplomatic and intelligence documentation of the CIA and the US Foreign Department. OSA's library is the only place in Central and Eastern Europe where the Wiener Library collection of documents on the Nazi movement and the history of European Jews from 1930-1960 is accessible.

The Archives teaches archival courses, runs public programs, organizes film screenings and exhibitions for-and with the active participation of-the CEU community. Students are encouraged to delve into the holdings to find research subjects for their theses, to identify materials for research publications, to prepare research papers and thematic guides (Research Information Papers) for the Archives, and also to apply for student internships with OSA. As interns, they can participate in the processing work, obtaining hands-on experience of using primary resources in research, and gaining an insight into the process of setting up exhibitions.

Research in the Archives is free and open to anyone both on-site, in the Research Room located next to the CEU Library, and off-site, through the Internet. Whether on- or off-site, OSA provides copying services in different formats, such as photocopies, videotape and audiotape copies as well as photographs.

The Research Room, which is equipped with computers and microfilm readers, has the complete set of finding aids and a wide selection of handbooks and journals on open shelves. This is also where OSA's video library is housed. Consultations with the staff of OSA can be requested personally at the reception of the Archives (Oktober 6 building, second floor), by phone, fax or e-mail during the opening hours of the Research Room (9.30 a.m.-4.30 p.m. on weekdays).
More information available at: OSA website