Annual maintenance work will take place again this summer, which is why the reading rooms at the Heldenplatz location and in all collections will be closed from Friday, July 25, to Tuesday, August 5, 2025.
Due to the shutdown of the ordering system, no media orders can be accepted from Thursday, July 24, 2025, 4 p.m. to Tuesday, August 5, 2025, 4 p.m. The regular opening hours will then apply again from Wednesday, August 6, 2025.
The study room of the Albertina is closed from July 15 to August 15. During this time (except July 25 to August 5), media ordered from the Albertina collection will be transported twice a week (Monday and Thursday) to the reading rooms of the National Library on Heldenplatz and can be used there.
Starting August 1, 2025, the State Hall will open at 9 a.m.
Due to an event, the State Hall will be closed on August 4, 2025.
In 2003, the Austrian National Library was the first federal institution to submit its comprehensive provenance report as provided for by the 1998 Art Restitution Act. The report contained a list of all of the objects still held by the library that were stolen during the NS era. In-depth research had been conducted into the entire questionable holdings on the basis of available documents and autopsies carried out in the repositories. Despite numerous items returned immediately after the end of the war, more than 52,000 unlawfully acquired objects were identified. Since December 2003 it has been possible to return altogether 46,866 objects to their legitimate owners. According to the current state of research, however, about one third of the divested objects can be regarded as “heirless”.
In June 2010, the first and largest portion of these heirless books (8,363 individual volumes) was transferred to the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism in compliance with the provisions of the Art Restitution Act; in a subsequent step, these books were then repurchased at usual market prices that had been determined by an external appraiser.
Moreover, the Austrian National Library addressed the theme publicly in its exhibitions, such as “Looted Books. The Austrian National Library Confronts Its Nazi Past” (2004/5) and “Memories of More Beautiful Times: Images from the Perished World of the Jewish Collector Raoul Korty” (2008). In 2006, a comprehensive academic study on the institution’s NS history was published on the Austrian National Library’s initiative: Murray G. Hall and Christina Köstner: “… Allerlei für die Nationalbibliothek zu ergattern …” Eine österreichische Institution in der NS-Zeit. Vienna: Böhlau 2006.