In order to provide the best teaching and research activities, the „Iuliu Hațieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy disposes of one of the most valuable medical libraries in the country, the „Valeriu Bologa” Library.
In the light of more than two centuries of tradition of medical education in Cluj, the „Valeriu Bologa” Library continues a long bibliographic activity. The first medical school in Transylvania, established at the end of the 18th century in Cluj, the Medical-Surgical Institute, had its own library and an annual acquisitions budget. Following the foundation of the Royal Hungarian University (1872), the Institute was incorporated into the Faculty of Medicine and its collections were inherited by the University Library.
At the end of the First World War, following the Unification of Transylvania with Romania, the Hungarian University „Franz Joseph” was transformed into a Romanian University. The libraries of the departments of the Faculty of Medicine enriched their collections with treatises and university courses printed in Romanian. Some of the most valuable branches were represented by the Library of the Institute of Hygiene (approx. 40,000 volumes in 1940) and the Library of the Institute of History of Medicine. The latter was endowed with works on the history of universal and Romanian medicine, the history of sciences or sciences auxiliary to the history of medicine, but also with a collection of old books (16th 18th centuries).
After the reform of higher education in 1948, the Faculty of Medicine of the Romanian University „King Ferdinand I” was transformed into a higher education institute, namely the Institute of Medicine and Pharmacy. Since 1949 the Institute had its own central library entrusted with the activity of all the documentary libraries belonging to different departments and disciplines. The library was coordinated by a Scientific Council, an advisory board, whose task was to harmonize the work of the library with the teaching and scientific activity of the Institute.
After 1990, the University Library underwent an extensive modernization process. At the same time the Library adopted the name of Professor Valeriu Bologa (1892-1971), the first Romanian professor of the history of medicine, an eminent teacher and bibliophile with a rich experience in scientific research and publishing.
The „Valeriu Bologa” Library holds a book collection estimated at about 120,000 volumes. Currently there are more than 8000 active users. The library is entirely computerized, the existing collection being available online. All cataloguing, reader registration and loan transactions are carried out through the integrated Liberty 5 system. Approximately 90% of the holdings are in open access shelving, with books organized according to the NLM (National Library of Medicine of the USA) in sequence of medical specialties, from preclinical to clinical. The reading rooms offer more than 400 seats and 35% of them have computers connected to the university network.
The „Valeriu Bologa” Library collection is distributed in two locations:
- Central Library, 8 Victor Babes Street:
- 3rd floor: medical reference books; Romanian and foreign medical books in the clinical field (WA-WZ codices).
- 125 seats in the reading room
- 8 seats for computers
- 4th floor: Romanian and foreign preclinical medical books (QD-W quotations); textbooks for English and French language sections (CSE and CSF)
- 70 seats in the reading room
- 28 seats for computers
- B. P. Hașdeu 38-66: textbooks/courses, practical workbooks for the Romanian section, dissertations, PhD theses and Romanian and foreign journals in printed format.
- 212 seats in the reading room
- 113 seats for computers
Contact
Address: 8 Victor Babes Street
400012 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Tel: +40-374834215 (secretariat), +40-374834216 (4th floor), +40-374834217 (3rd floor) or +40-374834218 (Hașdeu branch)
E-mail: bibliotecaumf@umfcluj.ro
