Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Filozofski fakultet
Established 19 October 1874
Type Public
Dean Damir Boras
Location Zagreb, Croatia
Website ffzg.hr

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences or the Faculty of Philosophy[1] in Zagreb (Croatian: Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu) is one of the top faculties of the University of Zagreb.

Contents

History

The Faculty of Philosophy is the oldest faculty of the University of Zagreb, which dates its founding to 1669. Philosophy and humanities were taught at the University from the very beginning, while a separate Faculty first came into existence in 1776 when the University was divided into Faculties of Philosophy, Theology and Law.

In 1874 the modern University of Zagreb was officially established, with four faculties: Law, Theology, Philosophy and Medicine. The Faculty of Philosophy was called the Mudroslovni fakultet and had the following Chairs:

The Faculty also served as the general scientific faculty, and since 1876 it taught geology, botany, physics, mathematics, and chemistry; since 1877 zoology; since 1882 pharmacy; since 1883 geography.

In 1893, the Chair of Pedagogy was instituted. The Study of Archeology started in 1893. The Chair of German Philology was created in 1895. The Chair of Indo-Germanology was created in 1908, transformed into the Study of Indology in 1962. The Seminar on Romance Philology first started in 1920. The Chair of Ethnology was created in 1924/1927. The Art History Seminar was created in 1928. The Chair of Psychology was created in 1929. The English Seminar was created in 1935.

Mathematics, pharmacy and other sciences started to split off in several stages, with the creation of separate mathematics and pharmaceutical departments in 1928, when the faculty was renamed into its current name Filozofski fakultet, and the splitting off of individual departments into separate faculties in 1942, 1946 and finally in 1963.

The Institute of Phonetics was founded in 1954. The Chair of General Linguistics and Comparative Literature was created in 1956. The Chair of Sociology was created in 1963 (the Faculty of Law had one since 1906). The Study of Swedish started in 1985. In 1989, the Institute for Information Sciences was founded. In 1994, the Study of Hungarology started.

In 2009, the faculty was occupied by students who required free education. The peaceful occupation started on April the 20th 2009 and ended on May 24th. The second occupation started on November the 23rd 2009 and ended nearly two weeks later.

Current organization

There are two models of study programs: single major (all courses belong to one program) and double majors (student studies in two equally important programs for equal degrees in both):

The faculty has more than 700 employees, with more than 500 academic staff as well as more than 600 part-time lecturers.

Library

The Faculty Library[2] moved into a new building opened in March 2009, becoming the second largest library in Croatia (after the nearby National and University Library in Zagreb). It includes 24 department libraries with more than 600 000 books. The library consists of the ground floor, 6 upper floors and a closed repository. The ground floor is mainly intended to be used for reading and writing, while the five upper floors contain books from all departments.

As of 2010, the sixth floor does not function yet. Books which have not been processed yet and are not available for public use are stored in the closed repository, located in the basement.

There are 750 working places and 250 computers available for use. The library is open to all students and employees of the Faculty for borrowing books, while members of the public may use books and other resources within the library building. All members and library employees use Koha – a special kind of software for library activity which has several interfaces depending on the type of user. The catalogue is open access and is simple to use. It is possible to search for particular books by title, author, ISBN, subject, publisher and call number.

The whole library system is highly technically advanced and equipped with models for supply, catalogization, public borrowing and statistics. One of the main advantages of the library is the 3M RFID system of electronic chips, which enables self-check, allowing users to borrow books by themselves.

References

External links