AZ ORSZÁGOS SZÉCHÉNYI KÖNYVTÁR ÉVKÖNYVE 1965-1966. Budapest (1967)

IV. Könyvtörténet, könyvtártörténet, művelődéstörténet - Somkuti Gabriella: Korszerű természettudományos irodalom Széchényi Ferenc és Teleki László könyvtárában (II) - Contemporary scientific literature in the libraries of Ferenc Széchényi and László Teleki (II)

Contemporary scientific literature in the libraries of Ferenc Széchényi and László Teleki IL G. SOMKUTI The 18th century collections of the Hungarian private libraries have in the course of time dispersed or became parts of the holdings of the great public libraries. Unfortunately, the material of these private libraries can be reconstructed only on the basis of contemporary manuscript catalogues which survived by chance. The present study treats two important Hungarian collections of the 18th century taking their catalogues for basis of the examination. In 1802 Count Ferenc Széchényi (1754—1820) donated his library consisting of works in Hungarian or dealing with Hungary to the nation and by this he founded the National Library of Hungary. In 1818 he completed the holdings of the library with his collection of 9000 volumes of foreign literature. The Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was founded in 1826 on the family library of 30 000 volumes of Count László Teleki (1754— 1820) donated to the Hungarian Learned Society by Count József Teleki. Both founders were aristocrats of enlighted minds and progressive spirit in the 18th century, playing a most significant part in the society of contemporary Hungary. They travelled throughout Western Europe and had extensive foreign relations, consequently both of them had a keen interest in the achievements of the scientific and literary life in the foreign countries. This fact is well proved by the great number of books acquired by them abroad. Our study deals with the scientific literature of the 18th century published abroad and examines whether these collections included contemporary modern scientific works. After a short introduction about the history of sciences, the study comes to the different divisions of learning and introduces both libraries' relative works, then appreciates the holdings in a summary and points out their deficiencies. The first part of the study was published in the 1963—1964 Yearbook of the National Széchényi Library a nd treated the works on mathematics, physics and astronomy. This concluding part presents works on natural history (minearology, botany, zoology), on chemics, biology and medicine. After the critical examination of the stocks the study comes to the conclusion that the collections of both libraries included works on the achievements of the contemporary natural sciences and, especially Teleki's library, gave a good picture of the activity of the great scientists of that age, with some deficiencies though. In both libraries physics and natural history are represented best, in Teleki's collection the number of works on mathematics is sufficient, but on chemics and astronomy it is rather small. A special mention should be made on the works dealing with medicine and collected by Teleki with an extraordinary good sense; the number of books on this field of science amounts to the half of the whole collection. The works introduced in this study, i.e. the works on sciences published abroad in the 18th century amounted to 2,5 per cent in Széchényit collection and to 2,4 per cent in Teleki's collection. Both libraries included scientific works of earlier editions only in an insignificant number and the studies of different academies and learned societies were represented in a number not worth mentioning, this fact reflects the great proportion of works dealing with humanities very well. Considering the fact that even in the contemporary book publishing the rate of the works on humanities and on natural sciences showed a balance in the favour of the former, further, that these libraries belonged to aristocratic private persons and not to scientists, this proportion is advantageous and truly reflects the ambition of the age to get an encyclopedic knowledge, and to be informed of the contemporary scientific achievements. 428