Tîrgu-Mureș has an old and well-established tradition in what concerns libraries. Ever since the 16th century, Schola Particula, established with the reformed church in the fortress, had a rich and diverse collection of books. The first public library came into being at the beginning of the 19th century at the initiative of Count Samuel Teleki, chancellor of Transylvania, a native of the Mureș area. He made available to the public his valuable book collection which was the result of his travels around Europe and of his correspondence with some of the most famous printing houses of the time. Besides the Teleki library, there were other, smaller ones with limited access. The beginning of the 20th century was a time of numerous initiatives aimed to develop the cultural life of the city. The Court of Vienna and local authorities lead by Mayor Bernady György cooperated in order to build a cultural club in Tîrgu-Mureș. At the 40th anniversary of Franz Joseph”™s reign in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Palace of Culture was built in Tîrgu-Mureș and was initially named after the emperor. Several existing or newly-established cultural institutions would function in the new building. Among these was the municipal library inaugurated in 1913. Its first manager was Molnár Gábor, a law school graduate, a probationist with the Royal Table between 1881 and 1883, and later county chief. He held this position until 1936 and ensured a good functioning of the library by implementing the newest methods of the time. One of his most commendable initiatives was to encourage book donations. He made his own personal library available to the public. The successor of Molnar as manager of the Municipal Library was Aurel Filimon, an important archeologist, ethnographer and folklorist who established the first museum of Tîrgu- Mureș. He had an important role in the expansion of the library fund by adding books in Romanian. Following the 1940 Diktat of Vienna by which Hungary was given the Northern part of Transylvania, a policy detrimental to the Romanian population was implemented. This affected the library due to the deposition of Filimon and exclusion of Romanian books from the public circuit. Until 1949 the library was based exclusively on donations or retroactive completion, while later the books were purchased directly from centralized publishing houses. The instauration of the communist regime lead to a politicizing of  cultural institutions, to censorship and control of the publications that entered the library, but also to the reorganization and systematization of book collections and establishment of new sections. Thus, in 1952 the children's library came into being and was the first of its kind in the country. In 1961 a reading-room was established with a separate, permanent fund. Other sections that separated from the main body and later developed separately are: the technical books section, the art library, the periodicals section and special collections. Since 1974, the fund of the Teleki-Bolyai Library with its collection of old and rare books, among which 66 incunabula, has been administered by the County Library. As a result of its favorable evolution, the library of Tîrgu-Mureș ranks among the most important public libraries in the country having approximately 900,000 volumes. Bibliography: Dimitrie Poptămaș, Preludii la o bibliotecă publică în vol. "Tîrgu-Mureș, oraș al artelor", published by the Tîrgu-Mureș City Hall in cooperation with the "Vatra" review, pp. 235-248. Traina Dușa, Pagini de istorie,artă și cultură, Vol II, Editura Ansid, Tîrgu-Mureș, 2002, pp. 87-104.