The Central Library’s incunabula and old book collection is the product of long-term collective effort.

It was first catalogued by the University Library Supervisory Committee in 1990 in cooperation with the Library Material Research and Study Committee, which assembled a collection of books originating primarily from bequests and donations by Eleftheropoulos, Kalligas, Konstantinidis, Politis, Triantafyllidis and Trikoglou.

The committee then published a “Central Library Catalogue of Books: Period 1495-1821: Initial Thematic Approach”. A year later, in 1991, it published a “Catalogue of books in the fields of Physics, Biology and Medicine: Period 1525-1900”.

Subsequently, as part of the orderly classification and sorting of the Central Library’s collections, the rare book collections were re-organised and re-inventoried. Today, the rare book collection has 4442 volumes (published 1495-1821) and is stored in acid-free cases in a controlled environment in a special room in the Central Library.