One of the most important sources of ethnic culture is the book and document written and published in the mother tongue. This means, on the one hand, works published by the national authors of the host country and, on the other hand, access to the most important works of the mainland literature. Nationality documents can best be kept by libraries in an excavated, systematic form. The supply of national minority books, libraries and national minority culture are therefore closely interlinked and play an important conservation role.

The Cultural Act of 1997 requires county libraries to organise and provide library services for residents belonging to nationalities at county level (Section 66(c)). Nationalities also live in our county and in the city with county rights, therefore it is a priority to care not only for the sporadic, small number of nationalities, but also for the larger proportion of German, Roma and Slovak nationalities. In Miskolc there are Bulgarian, Greek, Polish, German, Armenian, Roma, Ruthenian, Slovak and Ukrainian national minority self-governments, in the county these will be expanded by a Romanian self-government.

In terms of population, the most important nationalities in our county are German, Roma and Slovak. Roma are the largest number of ethnic minorities and the most disadvantaged. Although their statistical and numerical definition is not clear on the basis of both language knowledge and nationality, the fact is that in 169 settlements in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County there are a significant number of inhabitants claiming to be Roma, primarily in Miskolc, Abaúj-Hegyköz, around Ózd and Encs in small settlements and small villages. In the latter, in many places the Roma minority is in the majority (in some cases 90-100%compared to the proportion of the Hungarian population.

In the past few years, several remedial programmes have been launched in the county, and our institution, with its own tools and funding, continuously contributes to the success of their goals and efforts.

There is also a significant proportion of German and Slovak nationalities in the county. Since 2008, we have delivered German and Slovak literature to a number of municipal and/or school libraries as part of the escrow service.

In order to expand the collection of our National Minority Collection, we receive 150,000 HUF non-refundable grant from the National Foreign Language Library for the acquisition of documents on an annual basis.

In connection with the acquisition and collection of national minority documents, our institution is primarily and fundamentally based on the tender opportunities of the National Cultural Fund and the support framework implemented with the help of the National Foreign Language Library.