The Leopoldina library
More than 260.000 volumes of knowledge
In 1731, the Leopoldina’s fifth president, Johann Jakob Baier (1677-1735), founded the Academy library whose stocks comprise about 260.000 volumes today. Material published by the members, and journals received from other societies via exchange, form the most extensive part of the collection. In addition, literature on the current state of knowledge and on the history of the natural sciences and medicine is an important focus of the collection. The library receives publications, written or published by members, predominantly as donations. Thus, the library also serves as a permanent archive for the publications of the Academy members. The Academy library receives complete series of publications from other academies in exchange for publications of the Leopoldina. The Academy maintains exchange relations with more than 500 partners in all parts of the world, through which it obtains over 900 series of publications and journals, monographs and doctoral theses. Literature, which has been processed in machine-readable format since 1992, can also be researched on the internet. The archiving of older stock for interlinked catalogues is underway. The Academy library is open to all users in research and teaching and to the public at large.
The stockroom of the building the Academy moved into in 1904 (Halle is the sixth place the library has been accommodated in, and there were removals within the different towns as well) was designed for 100 years, thus in 2000, it reached the limits of its capacity. This year, it was possible to extensively rebuild the library, and an extension to the stockroom was added. However, the essential features of interior design have been retained and still create the original impression. The volumes are systematically arranged in 58 subject groups on six magazine floors.
Together with the University library, the Academy library building still forms an architectural unit today, which is not incidental. With its novel skeleton structure, the Halle University library, which was explicitly designed as a functional building, was rightly regarded as the most modern library construction in the whole of Germany when it was built in 1880, and the Leopoldina applied the same concept to its buildings twenty years later. So in the townscape of Halle, the ensemble, which has since been excellently restored, is also a symbol of the plain, practical but nevertheless impressive style of the libraries in that era.
Contact
Library
August-Bebel-Str. 50a
D-06108 Halle (Saale)
Phone: +49 - 345 - 4 72 39 - 47
Fax: +49 - 345 - 4 72 39 - 49
biblio@leopoldina-halle.de
