The Wrocław University Library serves teaching and research needs of the University community as well as promotes science and culture amongst the general public. It has over three hundred years of experience in serving the University and the city of Wrocław. Its future is a development into a ‘hybrid library’, an institution combining both traditional and electronic libraries. This perspective is closely related to the construction of the new and modern building. The new site will significantly help Wrocław University Library evolve into an educational, research and information center where respect of cultural heritage is accompanied by the usage of state of the art information technology.
The Library holds almost 2,500,000 volumes (ca. 4,000,000 together with specialized faculty libraries), and keeps expanding according to its acquisition profile. The most precious part of the entire collection is the special collection, which includes the largest set of early printed books known in Poland, numbering over 300,000 volumes. With over 12,500 manuscript inventory items, this collection is also one of the largest in the country. The University Library has a rich music collection with unique copies from the whole world adding up to over 40,000 volumes including 4,400 pieces of early printed sheet music, and around 25,000 items of sheet music published from 1801 onwards, as well as 2,500 music manuscripts. Other valuable library resources are the graphic collection (around 60,000 items), a cartographic collection (around 12,000 items) as well as an expensive collection of around 90,000 volumes of Silesian prints, including around 40,000 Silesian serials.
Libraries of the Wrocław University of Science and Technology are an integral part of a Center for Scientific and Technical Information which was established on January 1st, 2014. CWINT is situated in an impressive new building in the heart of the University campus and is an interdepartmental unit which runs scientific, research, educational and service activities. The Traditional Library collects and provides access to traditional printed information resources in line with the University profile and its user's needs. The users have access to all resources (also valuable 19th century science books) in freshly renovated and spacious rooms, like the Fiction Circulation Desk and Reading Room.
The Electronic Library is responsible for testing, collecting and providing access to electronic information resources. It also creates electronic resources which are made accessible in Open Access within Lower Silesian Digital Library and WUST Knowledge Repository. In the Electronic Library there is a state-of-the-art digitization room, furnished with equipment and software for scanning library resources, documents and 3D objects. Electronic Library patrons can use fully equipped multimedia reading rooms and a friendly space for individual and group work, which are available in the Open Study Zone.
The Main Library of the
Wrocław University of Economics is located in a new building which was put into use in 2011. The book collection is available for readers on the three floors of the Open Access Area by way of open storage. This modern building is equipped with an exhibition hall, seminar/conference and didactic rooms, cubicles for individual and group work, play room for children and all the facilities necessary for disabled people.