A Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtár és Információs Központ alapító állományának állattani témájú könyvei

Abstract

. Even if books on miscellaneous topics, mainly those broadly related to agriculture, are taken into consideration, the founding book collection of the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences contains a relatively small number of zoological titles. Of the 30,000 volumes donated by Count J ÓZSEF T ELEKI on behalf of his family to the Academy, only 406 titles are related to zoology proper and only 47 of these can be regarded in one way or another as Hungarica. However, the small number of these books is not to be taken as an indication of the lack of interest in zoology on the part of the T ELEKI s but rather as a reflection of the age itself. In spite of the spectacular development of the natural sciences in the course of the 18th and early 19th century, the importance they were to gain in the 20th century was not yet achieved. Moreover, and mainly due to the peculiar political-constitutional conditions of Hungary, other disciplines attracted more attention in that period. In view of this, the book collecting efforts of the T ELEKI s deserve our praise and recognition: in addition to a number of titles by foreign authors, still renowned today, they aimed to purchase almost every book that was published on zoology in contemporary Hungary.