Object of the month – White water-lily 

Eighty-year-old herbarium specimen of the White water-lily (Nymphaea lotus var. thermalis) from the collection of Rezső Soó.

The relatives of the White water-lily in Püspökfürdő (Oradea, Romania) live nearly 2000 km away in Africa. According to the long-standing view of the former director of the Botanical Garden, János Tuzson, the Nile water lily (Nymphaea lotus) may have been a natural stand in the subtropical climate 2-3 million years ago. During the ice ages, it was able to survive and become independent of its Nile counterpart due to the milder local temperature conditions. Its relatives were clarified by molecular genetics: it has no different from the Nile water lily. It was naturalized probably during the Roman period. Unfortunately, the habitat in Oradea is endangered by great tourism investments. 

This herbarium sheet was collected on the 13rd of October 1940 by Rezső Soó, who was one of the greatest figures in Hungarian botany and former director of the Botanical Garden, during this years he was the head of the department in Cluj-Napoca. As a dried plant (herbarium sheet) it can be preserved and used for educational and research purposes for centuries. The genetic stock of the specimen could used for comparison to these days, as the other 30,000 specimens of the Herbarium from many parts of the world. The greatest value of this collection is the series of the flora of Carpathian Basin, including many species of plants, which are extinct at the original habitat.

László Papp, Botanical Garden of ELTE 

The ELTE University Library and Archives will be open on Saturdays from the 30th of April 2022, therefore the Eötvös Exhibition can also be visited.

In honor of Loránd Eötvös, a former professor of our university, we opened our interactive exhibition in 2019. Throughout his life, the world-famous physicist and university professor admired nature, researching the nature of the world. At our exhibition, visitors can get a glimpse of the scientific methods of Loránd Eötvös, try out his experimental tools, view the landscapes he saws during his travels and the exciting world of the turn of the century.

Please, contact our colleagues to arrange an appointment at kiallitas@lib.elte.hu.

The exhibition can be visited on the 30th of April 2022 without registration.

The Eötvös Loránd University Library and Archives, the MTA – ELTE University History Research Group and the Primate Archives invite you to a book launch on the 13th of May 2022 from 3 pm at the Main Reading Room of the University Library (1053 Budapest, Ferenciek tere 6.).

The event will present recent publications about the students of the University of Nagyszombat and the Lyceum and Seminaries of the University of Nagyszombat.

Kmety Adrien – Szögi László – Varga Júlia: A Nagyszombati Egyetem bölcsész és teológus növendékei 1635–1711. Esztergom, 2021. I. – II. 1137 p.

The publication is presented by: Dr. István Fazekas, Associate Professor, Head of Research Group.

Szögi László: A nagyszombati érseki líceum és a papnevelő intézetek növendékei 1802–1850. Esztergom, 2021. 467 p.

The publication is presented by: Dr. Krisztina Tóth, habilitated Associate Professor, Head of Archives.

All visitors are welcome!

Yolland Arthur (1874–1956) was a literary historian, Hungarian national champion tennis player, footballer, coach and football referee. He completed his university studies in Cambridge, then moved to Hungary in 1896 on behalf of the Ferenc József Educational Institute and became a teacher at the institute. From 1898 he was an English language lecturer at Pázmány Péter University. In 1904 he obtained a doctorate in humanities, and from 1908 he taught in the department of English language and literature at the university. He compiled several dictionaries and translated several Hungarian literary and scientific works into English. In 1925 he was elected dean of the Faculty of Arts.  

In addition to his scientific teaching activities, he also took an active part in sports. His favorite sports included golf, football, tennis, athletics, rowing and cricket. He played sports and taught at BEAC and other associations. He played for the Hungarian Athletics Club (MAC) as a tennis player, winning national championships in the men’s singles in 1899 and 1900.  

He was a historical participant, founder, distributor and referee of Hungarian football. Since 1897, he has been one of the first Hungarian football referees. Between 1902 and 1910, he followed the matches of the Hungarian–Austrian national team, which were the first official international matches of the Hungarian national football team. He is commemorated by BEAC Yolland Arthur’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which is awarded for many years of outstanding performance for the club.  

NI4OS invites applications for access to computing resources (HPC, cloud services), storage and data services, software and scientific manuscripts. NI4OS-Europe offers a broad set of generic, thematic services as well as repositories in the European region, with the special focus on the scientific communities of Life Sciences, Climatology, Digital Cultural Heritage and Computational Physics. Generic services are in the areas of Compute resource provisioning (HPC and Cloud), Storage, and Data services provisioning. Repositories provide access to datasets, Software, as well as scientific manuscripts.

More information on this call: NI4OS-Europe Open Call

Deadline for submission is Wednesday, the 11th of May 2022.

We are pleased to inform you that from the 30th of April 2022, we will offer reading and study opportunities in the Main Reading Room on Saturdays from 10 am to 6 pm.

The following services will be available at the Information Desk on the ground floor:

• registration and membership renewal
• book return
• loan extension
• borrowing and on-site use of prepared books (for requests made till 7.30 pm on Fridays).

For more information, please contact us at the following contact details:

• email: info@lib.elte.hu
• Ask the librarian!
• phone: +36 1 411-6500/4432 ext.

On Saturdays, you can also visit our Eötvös Exhibition, for more information, please visit the exhibition registration page.

All visitors are welcome!

György Pálos, an award-winning film director, cinematographer and screenwriter, released an almost complete selection of his works related to education to those interested in the subject.

György Pálos graduated from the Eötvös Loránd University in 1986 with a degree in French history. He has been working as a director-cinematographer since 1989. He has been working at the Department of Film Studies at Eötvös Loránd University since 2000. He is a member of the Association of Hungarian Filmmakers, the Guild of Hungarian Directors, and the Hungarian Independent Film Association.

"The success of documentary filmmaking and teaching is decided on the field. It is the question how can I – both as a filmmaker and teacher - make sense of a situation, understand it and make it work in favour of my plan."

He enjoys making feature films, documentaries, but his attention and interest has been more focused on the documentary genre lately. He holds a course on documentary filmmaking at Eötvös Loránd University and shares his decades of experience with students. His DLA’s dissertation was also written on documentary filmmaking.

The documentaries dealing with the educational situation in Hungary are available in the reading room of Kazinczy Street, ELTE PPK Library, on dedicated machines.

Source: ELTE ,doctoral dissertation , interview , interview
Pálos György's webpage

On the occasion of the International Librarian’s Day, we wish all librarians much joy and success in their work with the following lines.

„Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.” (Umberto Eco)

Loránd Eötvös, the namesake of the university died on April 8, 1919. His ancestor, Miklós Eötvös (1716–1783) was promoted to baronhood in 1768 by Mária Terézia for his military merits. The promotion was also accompanied by a title donation. In the family’s new coat of arms, the golden, standing griffin is a prominent element of the heart shield, which is a symbol of courage and speed. The quartered shield shows the charges and an undulating white ribbon representing the river Tisza near Vásárosnamény. There is a baron’s crown on top of the shield as a helmet decoration. The landscape in the background was made upon the idea of the designer, its description, unlike that of the coat of arms, is not included in the letter. The first page of the noble letter contains the painted coat of arms, which is depicted in our picture. The diploma is on display at our exhibition „Under the spell of accuracy – The life and work of Loránd Eötvös”.