In our 8 departments, important treasures of Austrian cultural heritage are preserved and made accessible to scholars. The departments are constantly growing, thanks to new acquisitions, and can be studied in reading rooms with the latest facilities.
» Picture Archives and Graphics Department
The Picture Archives and Graphics Department is Austria’s largest centre of pictorial documentation with holdings of approximately three million objects in different historical types of media.
» Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books
The historical core of the former imperial Court Library: discover one of the world’s most important collections of manuscripts and prints.
» Map Department
The Map Department looks after about 295,000 sheet maps, around 45,000 geographical-topographical plans, 800,000 picture postcards, 700 globes, 100 reliefs and models of castles and about 83,000 volumes of specialist literature and atlases.
» Literary Archive
The Literary Archive of the Austrian National Library collects lifetime and posthumous literary bequests from Austrian authors from the 20th century onwards and makes them available for academic study.
» Department of Music
Our music collection constitutes Austria's biggest music archive, and is both a modern academic research library and a place where the most valuable original musical manuscripts are kept.
» Department of Papyri
The papyrus collection, with about 180,000 items, is one of the largest of its kind in the world. In October 2001, the collection was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register of documentary heritage.
» Department of Planned Languages
Ever since it was founded in 1927, the Esperanto Museum of the Austrian National Library has held an extensive library, and in 1990 this was given the name Department of Planned Languages.
» Archives of the Austrian Folk Song Institute
Here you will find a huge collection of books and journals about folk songs, folk music, folk dancing and folk poetry in Austria.