Dead Library

The Dead Library exhibition is an experiment in modelling holdings of Hungarian libraries that have not been read since 1989. For the purposes of the exhibition we have selected five thousand books that were published between 1945 and 1989, in Hungary, in Hungarian, on topics of general interest, which have not been checked out since 1989.

The exhibition is a library installation, showing a typical branch library. The 300-square-meter space is dominated by bookshelves, on which the books are arranged in the standard library thematic order from technical and agricultural works to youth literature, arts and fiction.

The only difference between a traditional library and the Dead Library is that here visitors will find only unread books – ones that have not been checked out since 1989 (or longer). Visitors taking one book or another off the shelves will become their first readers in decades.

Our hope is that the Dead Library will inspire public thinking on libraries/archives, the preservation and re-use of information, and, by making the thousands of books available for browsing and reading, it will give visitors/readers the exceptional experience of re-discovering books otherwise destined for oblivion.