National Educational Library and Museum

National Pedagogical Library and Museum is a museum in Budapest founded in 1877. Its current headquarters is located at 40 Könyves Kálmán Boulevard, Budapest, in the Fairy Palace.

History

The National Department Museum was founded by Minister of Culture Ágoston Trefort during the dualist period, in 1877. They collected old teaching tools, but placed even greater emphasis on acquiring contemporary domestic and foreign school furnishings, teaching aids, textbooks, and specialist books. With their collection they encouraged Hungarian department manufacturing. Their goal was to implement the József Eötvös popular education reform (1868) in practice. In 1933 the institution was dissolved. In 1958 it was reorganized—as a national specialist library—and in 1968 it was expanded with a national specialist museum.

Collection

The main units in the second half of the 1990s:

Library

Pedagogical and psychological books and periodicals (approximately 500,000 volumes)

Children’s and youth special collection (50,000 volumes)

National Textbook Library (70,000 volumes)

School notices special collection (80,000 items)

Museum

Archive photos and slides (over 39,000)

Historical documents (24,000 items)

Data bank (18,000 items)

It also possesses significant numismatic, fine arts, and children’s drawing material.

Exhibitions

A permanent exhibition titled József Eötvös and popular education is maintained in Ercsi, in its branch, the József Eötvös Memorial Museum. It organizes notable temporary exhibitions, for example the jewelry art exhibition “Sculptors and Masters” held in 2006.

Notable museum objects

The museum holds notable material relics such as 18th‑century demonstration instruments used for physics teaching at the University of Nagyszombat, the Hevelius celestial sphere made in 1728, a Baroque balancing doll, and the Leiden bottle. Also notable are Ányos Jedlik’s experimental devices (dynamo, small furnace) and Loránd Eötvös’s university teaching instruments (double balance, elbow hinge, electrometer).