History

The Central Medical Library was established in 1918, few months after the Sofia University’s Faculty of Medicine was found. The first librarian was Maria Abramovich. Once the Faculty of Medicine separated from the Sofia University and became an independent institution, the Library also grew into an integral university body.

The library’s collection was initially very modest. It was accumulated mainly by donations, but over time it grew so significantly that the library had to move premises several times until it finely found its present home. In 1978 the Central Medical library settled in the building where you can find it today at 1 “Sv. Geogri Sofiiski” Street, on the Alexandrovska Hospiral campus.

The whole team of qualified librarians, bibliographers and information specialists, as well as previous directors Vera Kyulyumova, Nadezhda Kudreva, Dr. Victoria Pencheva, Dr. Petar Dabchev, Dr. Lidiya Tacheva have contributed to the development of the library over the years.

Present times

Today the library is an integral unit of the Medical University – Sofia. It offers scientific literature in the fields of Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Health Care and Public Health, available to lecturers and students of the University, as well as external scientists and researchers. Its print collections comprise 300,000 + books, journals, dissertations in Bulgarian and other languages, as well as 3D anatomic models.

In support of the University’s research and educational activities, the library subscribes to and offers access to thousands of online journals and books. The availability of all library items can be checked online through the library catalogues.

The library building provides access to several types of reading spaces, with a total of about 150 seats:

Reading hall 1 (quiet area for self-study and reading)
Reading hall 2 and Loans service
Computer hall
Creative space hall (for group studies)
Events and group study room (should be booked in advance).

Our friendly library staff is here to help you find the information sources you need.

We have built and continue to expand our own bibliographic database “Bulgarian Medical Literature”, indexing all Bulgarian medical journal articles since 2003.

The library’s “Scientific Medical Information” department organizes and publishes the scientific journals of the Medical University – Sofia. These are multidisciplinary and highly specialized medical periodical editions, known to several generations of Bulgarian doctors, which are indexed in a number of international databases such as Scopus, CABI – Global Health database, EMBASE, EBSCO, etc.

The department has specialists in the fields of language editing, formatting and graphic design, who carry out the pre-print of several journals, issued by Bulgarian medical associations. Pre-print services for individual monographs, textbooks, dissertations, etc. are also provided upon request from authors.