The Oriental Collection is located on the ground floor of the Palace of the Academy (Széchenyi István tér 9). Its reading room accommodates eight readers. The holdings can be consulted by persons over 18 years of age who hold a valid reader pass that can be obtained at the Reference & Reader Services. Reading is primarily allowed on-site, only scholars with an academic degree, PhD students specializing in oriental studies, and employees of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) are permitted to borrow certain books that are not subject to other restrictions.
Certain manuscripts and old books of historical value can be accessed in digitised form available in REAL database. In justified cases, when the nature of a scholar’s work requires consulting some of the original manuscripts, application must be made to the Head of the Department for permission to work with individual items.
Photocopying and other imaging services can be ordered according to the general rules of the Library. The copies may be ordered as per the Library's regulations, but due to criteria of protection and safeguarding all such requests are reviewed individually. Uncatalogued items are not made available for research. Books and periodicals ordered from the stacks will take time to be served. If the item requested is preserved in our external stacks or the order is placed before closing time, it will be available from 10 a.m. the following day. The reader will receive the periodicals stored in the internal repository immediately, while other documents will be provided shortly. Other requests can be obtained on the next day. Items can be put to reserve for extended use.
All coats and bags should be left in the cloak-room. If the service is not available, the coats and bags must be left at the designated area of the reading room. The books brought into the Collection must be shown to the staff at the Reader Services. Books and manuscripts should be handled with utmost care and failure to do so results in the payment of fines and the exclusion from readership. Furthermore, those who attempt to take materials belonging to the Oriental Collection from the reading room without permission or make copies with their own mobile phones against the prohibition also exclude themselves from the use of the Collection.
Items in our special collections (e.g. Kaufmann, Stein, Csoma etc.) can only be consulted with permission from the curator of the given collection.
Intent of publication from the holdings of the Collection should be announced. The published work should include a reference to the holding in the form specified by the Collection.
