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.
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From July 2023 to September 2024, the Image Archive and Graphic Collection department conducted a project to digitise the extensive graphic collection of the Swiss pastor and physiognomist Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801), financed with EU funds as part of the “Cultural Heritage Digital” funding programme.
The unique collection comprises over 22,000 illustrated sheets. It owes its origin to Lavater’s interest in the interpretation of individual human characters based on external characteristics (physiognomy) and consequently contains mainly portraits and other depictions of people.
After Lavater's death, the collection was sold and ultimately made its way into the hands of the Austrian imperial family. It was incorporated into the National Library in 1921 as part of the Habsburg-lothringischen Familien-Fideikommissbibliothek.
Until recently, the “Lavater Collection” was hardly known or accessible. Its digitisation made a unique cultural-historical collection freely available to researchers and the interested public worldwide for the first time. To accompany this project, the collection is presented in its historical context in an online-presentation (in German) since August 2024.
The Familien-Fideikommissbibliothek of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine family comprises about 116,000 volumes. It includes works about literature, history, technology, natural sciences, geography and philosophy and covers the main political, social and cultural events from the Late Enlightenment period to the end of the monarchy. In addition to books, manuscripts, sketches, printed graphics and paintings, it also includes photographs, maps, dedications to the emperor and » Files and documents about the imperial family.
Most of the contents of the library can be found in our » Catalogue. In a current project at the Austrian National Library, the works are being fully catalogued and will also be available in digitised versions in future.
History
Aim of the research projects
The Austrian National Library has set itself the goal of researching the history of the library's collections. The basic research is now being carried out for the second FWF project, covering the period from 1835–1921. The change in the library's role that the project is looking at took place in several stages: from a unique private collection to an Fideikommissbibliothek, later becoming a memorial to the monarchy and finally becoming part of the nation's cultural heritage in the republican era. We would like to give new impetus to the story of Austria's princely and national libraries by studying their place in the national identity and collective memory.
Themes of the research projects
Our research methods include
Have we made you curious? You can find more information about the results of the project on the Website for the FWF research project.
