OPKM

1877-1933
The National Educational Library and Museum is more than hundred years old. Its predecessor, the National Museum for School Equipment, was founded in 1877. The Museum provided elementary schools with school equipments and facilities. The Museum's collection contained not only old and historic school equipments, but current native and foreign ones, too. The foreign school equipments advanced comperative researches and encouraged the production of school equipments in Hungary. Its task was also to discuss the value of native equipments and to jugde about their introduction into schools' practice.
In the early 1900's it became more and more necessary to establish an educational library. The National Educational Library and Museum for School Equipment was opened in 1906. Between 1906-1914 was the golden age of the institution. Its collection contained more than 40.000 books included special books of the sciences of education, textbooks, school reports, children and youth literature. The Museum for School Equipment was closed in 1922, and the library was joint to the library of the Ministry of Education because of financial problems. Due to unsatisfactory conditions the library was wound up and its collection (ca. 100.000 books) was shared among libraries in 1933.
The National Educational Library and Museum was refounded in 1958.