Budapest’s libraries go digital: Get to know the Hungarian capital’s heritage online!
To mark the 75th anniversary of Greater Budapest, the Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library (FSZEK) has launched a new online platform – the Budapest Electronic Archive (BEA) – offering more than 69,000 digitised documents from the capital’s rich past and cultural life.
Preserving the city’s heritage online
According to FSZEK, the archive aims to provide a single platform where users can explore the library’s vast digital collections, regardless of topic, genre, or type. Materials from the Budapest Collection, the Sociological Collection, and the Music Collection are all available, along with documents from ongoing library projects and themed selections.
The platform is not limited to reading materials – users can also browse and listen to audio and video content, including podcasts, lectures, photographs, and recordings of library events. The design focuses on ease of use: popular categories such as posters, sheet music, and photographs are accessible directly from the homepage, while a comprehensive search tool allows users to filter by title, author, date, or keyword.
Currently, the archive contains:
- 63,880 documents from the Budapest Collection,
- 1,126 items from FSZEK’s projects,
- 1,042 from the Sociological Collection,
- 1,002 from the library’s branches, and
- 271 from the Music Collection.
The BEA continues to expand, with new categories and materials to be added regularly. While a significant portion of the content is freely accessible to the public, some documents remain restricted to the library’s internal network for copyright reasons. Importantly, no registration is required to access the public materials.
FSZEK emphasises that the archive not only offers easier access to Budapest’s past but also ensures that future generations can explore and appreciate the city’s diverse cultural heritage in digital form.
Medieval treasures unveiled online
In a related initiative, the National Széchényi Library (OSZK) has made around 400 medieval codex fragments available online through its digital content platform, Copia. The Fragmenta Codicum database now allows free access to high-resolution digital copies and detailed descriptions of these manuscripts in Hungarian, English, and German for the first time.
The OSZK’s manuscript collection is the largest in Hungary, comprising around 700 codices and thousands of fragments. Many of the medieval manuscripts that once existed in Hungary were lost to war and time, making the surviving pieces particularly valuable remnants of Europe’s early book culture.
The newly available collection includes liturgical, musical, legal, theological, and historical texts, as well as works by classical authors. Among the most notable is a fragment of Bede the Venerable’s poem on Saint Cuthbert, written in early medieval Insular script from the British Isles.
These fragments, mostly written on parchment between the 8th and 16th centuries, were often reused in later centuries as book covers or bindings and were later recovered during restoration efforts. Their digitisation marks an important step in preserving and sharing Hungary’s medieval intellectual and artistic legacy with the world.
Together, these two major projects highlight Hungary’s growing commitment to making its cultural treasures freely accessible in the digital age, ensuring that both Budapest’s urban history and the nation’s medieval literary heritage are preserved for generations to come.