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 contrast to the official image of the library, its inner story unfolded more in silence, even though it was presided by noteworthy men of its time. In 1745, Gerard van Swieten, known as Maria Theresa’s personal physician and reformer of medical education, was called to Vienna as the court library’s new prefect.
In the Netherlands, the Dutchman and "Little Republican", as he described himself, had not only become acquainted with and learnt to appreciate a state-of-the-art publishing industry, but also the modern academic library system of Leiden. Via booksellers in Paris, Venice, and Leiden, he organised the purchase of recent scientific literature from Western European countries for the court library, thus adding a key element of a modern library to its collection activities: the acquisition of the latest scientific writings. Gerard van Swieten was perfectly familiar with them, since as president of the book censorship commission he read and commented upon numerous academic works himself, most of which dealt with the natural sciences, but they also included works by the French Enlighteners. For instance, the library owns a codex in which Gerard van Swieten comments upon the books censored by him using a cryptographic code:
"A useful book I bought for the library", "doesn’t contain anything bad", "quite a useful book", "found nothing bad, but nothing useful either" are positive comments that can be found, but there are others, too: "shameless, will be banned", "contains a lot of dangerous things, will be banned"