The move
From the central and departmental libraries, 28 thousand linear meters of books and documents, as well as furniture and computer equipment had to be moved to the new building on Ady Square. The main part of the moving process took place at a very fast pace, within a span of three months, September, October and November of 2004, with around 400 linear meters of volumes being moved each day.
The moveing of the journal archives
Every library department and its staff worked together on the task
Hórukk-Speed Kft. was commissioned to carry out the moving project
One day before closing
The volumes of the NUC are already prepared for transportation
The empty shelves of the journal reading area
The empty reading room
Empty shelves
Last day in the building on Dugonics Square
Last day in the building on Dugonics Square 2
Last day in the building on Dugonics Square 3
Emptying the building on Dugonics Square
Placing the first-floor specialized reading area’s volumes onto the shelves
But not everything went as easy as the pictures suggest. Before the relocation of the reading room collections, it was necessary to plan the content arrangement of the specialized reading areas. The mass production of content indications determining the location of documents in the reading areas and the organization of the incoming collections into a kind of primary arrangement from the many libraries with different processing levels were also part of the preparatory work. Putting the partially unprocessed book material (often lacking label or barcode) onto the shelves required many work hours and the full cooperation of the librarians.
Emptying, then restocking the specialized reading areas
Moreover, the incoming collections to the storage rooms brought many challenges for the library’s staff. After moving in, a huge amount of work awaited not only the staff working in the storage rooms but also the librarians working in other areas of the library, to organize everything. It took several years to fix the anomalies caused by the extremely rapid relocation. For example, in the following year, extensive rearrangement of materials was needed on the first and second storage levels in order to accommodate the books returning from loans predating the relocation. The process was complicated by the integration of departmental libraries’ collections, as their librarians who were accustomed to finding everything quickly in a system that had not changed for decades, now faced the challenge that the material had now been placed to a new location with new rules. Despite the many difficulties, we still managed to meet the deadline.
The opening speech of the then rector Gábor Szabó
On December 9, 2004 Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, Minister of Culture Bálint Magyar, Mayor László Botka, Rector Gábor Szabó (Keszthelyi) Szabó, and Director General Béla Mader inaugurated the new building jointly.
"We are not having a ribbon-cutting ceremony, we are simply making this day memorable", said the university’s rector at the time.