The institution created in Selmecbánya in 1735 was essentially a vocational school for mining. In 1763, a chair of chemistry was created and the institution was reorganized as a college. A charter issued in 1770 by Maria Theresa raised the school to the rank of "academy." Eventually, the fields represented at the Academy were broadened to include metallurgy and forestry, and its library is one of the oldest technical and scientific libraries. Since, after World War I, Selmecbánya fell within the territory of the newly created Czechoslovakia, the Academy and its library were moved on ox carts to Sopron, where it continued to function until 1949. In that year, a new technical university with three faculties (divisions) was created in Miskolc, and the library was divided between Sopron and Miskolc: 29,000 volumes were moved to Miskolc and 9,000 remained in Sopron.

The collection contains 20 manuscripts in addition to the books. The books are listed alphabetically in two parts: Part 1 contains volumes up to 1799, and Part 2 volumes from 1800 to 1850. The language of the books is predominantly (but by no means exclusively) German, but they reflect scientific achievements originally reported in other languages as well. Since the catalog is in two parts, readers searching for particular topics will need to search both parts. A particular deviation from alphabetical order is to be noted: in Part 2, the entry for LARDNER, Dionysius, is followed by 10 out-of-order entries beginning with the letter K, from "Der Königlichen Schwedischen Akademie der Wissenschafter neue Abhandlungen..." to KREYSIG, Georg Christoph.

The page images were created by scanning an old typescript at 300 DPI to JPEG files which are wrapped in HTML files. The typescript is smudged and unclear in places and the corresponding JPEG files are occasionally hard to read. It is largely satisfactory with a screen resolution set at 800x600 pixels.