The main areas of collection of the Central Library of Centre for Regional Studies – in accordance with the Centre's strategic objectives – are encompassing the basic works of economic and social development, the books describing socio-economic processes, interactions of economy – population – environment and the relevant books dealing with the methodology of their research in social sciences (regional sciences, economics, public administration, law, sociology, economic and social geography, environmental science and territorial statistics) .
The total collection of the Central Library consisted of 44 thousand documents in year 2008. This number has hardly increased during the past ten years, it rather has stagnated as the average annual growth by 400–450 dokuments is counterbalanced by a continuous and planned sorting out of oudated books for the sake of modernizing library stock and keeping it up to date.
During the past decades a fairly great amount of books in disciplines not researched by the institute any more (such as literature history, linguistics, folklore, mining, geology, meteorology) has been transferred in such a way to the collections of other local libraries, museums and libraries of university departments.
Scientific books and journals constitute a significant part of the library stock. Besides the traditional forms of documents maps, micro-prints, offprints as well as scientific papers, dissertations and electronic documents are also available in the Library.
Twenty per cent of the Library's 28 thousand books are in foreign language, the majority are in Enghlish or German and some of them are written in French and Russian. The average amount of new acquisitions is cca. 250–300 volumes per year and of them the proportion of English language documents is one half. All of the foreign - mainly English - language books are the most up to date West-European literature covering the fields of regional and local policy. The majority of books are basic literature providing international comparative analyses as well.
The presently 8,300 volumes of journals are covering the archives of nearly 600 journal titles. Of them the number of current journal titles is 300. Nearly 75 per cent of the Library's budget is spent on journal acquisitions.
Since 2003 the Library has been subscribing for 42 foreign scientific periodicals. The Hungarian National Database of Foreign Periodicals registrates 19 journals available only here in the whole territory of Hungary but 90% of foreign periodicals subscribed by the Library are available only here all over South-Transdanubia.
The Library's exchange partnerships and gifts provide additional foreign journals for the its holdings. The ranking of the Library's periodicals by language is highly lead by English as 56 per cent of journals are in English.
Due to its thematic content, its uniqueness, the continuity of orders the completeness of volumes and issues, the collection of foreign periodicals is the most valuable part of the Library's holdings.
The collection of current Hungarian periodicals comprises scientific journals and related fields as well as journals of general information on social policy issues. The Library treats micro-documents, offprints, maps, maunuscrips and electronic documents as special collections.
The collection of more than 3 thousand micro-documents and offprints is typically 'grey literature' which means books, papers, short research reports, offprints of researchers' publications, conference paper reprints, final texts or other printed materials not available at booksellers and they are acquired through our exchange contacts.
The collection of nearly 3 thousand maps originates from the the Library's historical initial collections. It covers several valuable albums, atlases and map sheets of historical importance . The annual growth of these two collections is not significant and the selection criteria of their entering into collection are rather strict.
The collection of manuscripts is much bigger in size and has greater importance as it has all the scientific manuscripts, research documents, scientific analyses, expert surveys and defended theses since 1984. This collection increases by 20–25 documents per year but recently it has started to been extended by electronic documents in on CD-ROM. Being manuscripts these documents are not published therefore they are unavailable for the greater public. These are highly valuable documents due to their primary information content therefore their use is strictly restricted.
Electronic documents have an increasing role in comparison to printed documents. The Library's CD-ROM and DVD-ROM collection comprises mostly the electronic versions of printed statistical yearbooks, legal databases, the latest volumes of lexicons, encyclopedias and repertories of some domestic and foreign periodicals.
Our Library – by the current size of its stock – out of the 17 libraries of the social science profiled research institutes of the Hungarian Academy belongs to the libraries of mid-sized category but by the age, by the scientific profile and multidisciplinary character of collection it can be regarded as one of the the Academy's most valuable and complex multidisciplinary social science research libraries.
The catalogization of the Library's material was based on printed catalogue cards until 2000. The retrieval of books, micro-documents, manuscripts and maps was done by searching the alphabetical, serial, subject and store-number catalogue. The computerization of the Library's catalogue started in 1993 and the initial MicroISIS system was replaced by TINLIB integrated library system in year 2001.
The current on-line catalogue is available since January 2003. The OPAC has full coverage of the Library's scientific manuscripts and electronic documents and partial coverage of books, maps, offprints and the journal articles of foreign language periodicals of regional science acquired by the Library since 1993. The retrospective catalogization of these materials is under progress.