History of the BUT Central Library

The Central Library has existed since 1899 when a library was established at the Czech Technical University in Brno (a predecessor of Brno University of Technology). Until 1911, it was situated in Jaselská Street, then moving to Veveří 95 (today's campus of BUT Faculty of Civil Engineering). At that time, its collections included 12,373 volumes. In 1945 it acquired the status of a University Central Library only to be separated from the university in the same year and renamed to a State Technical Library. Unfortunately, no written documents have been preserved on BUT libraries until 1960.

In 1960 a Library Centre is established situated at Starobrněnská 8. Since 1964, this centre has been coordinating 62 department libraries scattered in 18 different sites all over Brno. This involves central acquisition of international literature as well as book cataloguing for another six libraries. The remaining libraries maintained their own catalogues while sending records to the Library Centre to help build a union name-catalogue.

Under its present name, the BUT Central Library has existed since 1976. It has moved several times. From 1988 to 1992 it was situated in Koliště Street, from 1992 to 1994, it resided at Veveří 95 again, but you could have also found it at Klatovská 14 and Kounicova 67a in 1994. In 1995 it moved to Údolní 53 where it was located until 1999 to finally move to the BUT Centre at Antonínská 1 where you can find it today.

History of the library catalogue

A paper-file searching system was used in the library in the pre-computer era.

In the 1990's an MDokis electronic librarian system started to be used to be later replaced by a CDokis system making it possible to build a university union catalogue. The system also included a computer program to convert data to the international UNIMARC international exchange format.

At the beginning of the new millennium (in 2002), a new librarian system, Aleph, was bought, which has been used ever since at all BUT faculty and campus libraries.

History of leadership