Bavarian State Library facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Bavarian State Library
The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich
Country	Germany
Type	Academic library, regional library
Established	1558; 467 years ago (1558)
Location	Munich, Bavaria
Collection
Items collected	33,921,166
Legal deposit	yes, since 1663
Other information
Director	Klaus Ceynowa
Website	www.bsb-muenchen.de

The beautiful stairway inside the Bavarian State Library

An aerial view of the Bavarian State Library building

The Bavarian State Library (called German: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in German, or just BSB for short) is a huge and important library in Munich, Germany. It's the main state library for Bavaria and one of the biggest and most important libraries in Europe. Imagine a giant treasure chest of knowledge!

As of 2019, the library holds about 10.89 million books, making it one of the top research libraries worldwide. It also has the second-largest collection of journals (like magazines for experts) in Europe, right after the British Library. The BSB is famous for its amazing collection of old manuscripts (handwritten books), the largest collection of incunabula (books printed before 1501) in the world, and many other special collections. It has almost a million old books printed before 1850!

Since 1663, there's been a special rule in Bavaria: two copies of every book printed in Bavaria must be sent to the Bavarian State Library. This helps the library keep its collection growing and complete. The library also publishes its own magazines about libraries and books. You can find the main building on Ludwigstrasse in Munich.

What the Library Does

The Bavarian State Library does many important things:

• It's a general library and a research library for everyone.
• It's the main state library for Bavaria, collecting everything published there.
• It works with other big German libraries to create a "virtual national library" online.
• It runs the Munich Digitization Center, which turns old books into digital copies for everyone to see online.
• It helps collect special books for different subjects for German research.

Who Uses the Library?

In 2019, the library had over 78,000 active users and lent out more than a million items! About 4,000 people visit its reading rooms every day.

The main reading room is open almost all the time, from 8 AM to midnight daily. Here, you can find about 111,000 reference books that you can use right away. Also, about 1,500 books are brought from the storage areas (called repositories) for people to use each day. If you like magazines, the periodicals reading room has about 18,000 of the latest issues.

There are also special reading rooms for unique collections like manuscripts, old printed books, maps, images, music, and books from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. There's even a special research room for history lovers!

What's Inside: The Collections

The Bavarian State Library has an incredible collection of items. Here are some highlights:

• About 33.9 million items in total, including digital books.
• Around 10.89 million printed books.
• About 140,000 manuscripts (handwritten books), some of the most valuable in the world.
  • Some famous Latin manuscripts include:
    • The Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, a beautiful golden book from around 870.
    • The Prayerbook of Otto III and the Evangeliary of Otto III, both from around 1000.
    • The Carmina Burana, a famous collection of medieval poems and songs.
  • Famous German manuscripts include:
    • Manuscript A of the Nibelungenlied, an epic German poem. This book is so important it's on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register!
    • Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach and Tristan by Gottfried von Strassburg, two famous medieval stories.
• 645 Greek manuscripts and about 100 Slavic manuscripts.
• Around 37,500 music manuscripts.
• About 550 illustrated manuscripts, including the Fechtbuch (a fighting manual) by Paulus Hector Mair.
• 54,400 current magazines and journals (both print and digital), making it Europe's second-largest collection.
• 21,000 incunabula (books printed before 1501), which is the largest collection in the world! This includes a rare Gutenberg Bible.
• Over 2.5 million digitized books that you can read online.

Special Focus Areas

The library collects books and materials on many different subjects, with a special focus on:

• History (general, ancient, medieval, and modern)
• Languages and literature (especially German, French, Italian, Romanian, Albanian, and modern Greek)
• Music
• Information science and library studies
• Regions like Byzantium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, and a large focus on Eastern, Central, and South-Eastern Europe (including Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, and more).

How the Library is Organized

The library has a director and several main departments that help it run smoothly.

Leadership

Since 2015, Klaus Ceynowa has been the Director General of the Bavarian State Library. He leads the whole library, with help from different offices like IT and public relations.

Main Departments

The library is divided into important departments:

• Central Administration: This team handles the library's money, staff, and building maintenance.
• Collection Development and Cataloguing: This department is like the library's shopping and organizing team. They get new books (by buying them, getting donations, or through the legal deposit law) and then list and describe them so people can find them. This department also includes the Munich Digitization Center, which scans old books to put them online. They also work to protect and preserve old books so they last a long time.
• User Services: This department helps people use the library's collections and services. They help you find books, get them from storage, and answer your questions in the reading rooms.
• Manuscripts and Early Printed Books: This special department takes care of the library's most valuable and oldest books, like handwritten manuscripts. These treasures are why the Bavarian State Library is famous worldwide. They have a special reading room just for these old books.

Special Collections Departments

The library also has departments for very specific collections:

• Map Collection and Image Archive: This department has maps from 1500 to today, atlases, and a huge collection of images. They share a reading room with the music department.
• Department of Music: This is one of the best music libraries in the world! It has a huge collection of music, both old and new. It even helps with music research for all of Germany.
• Oriental and East Asia Department: This department has over 260,000 books in languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Indian languages. It also has more than 310,000 books in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese.
• Department of Eastern Europe: This is the biggest special department, with about a million books about and from Eastern Europe, including Russia and other countries.

Regional Library Support

The library also helps other libraries in Bavaria. It runs the Bavarian School of Library and Information Science, helps public libraries, and leads the Bavarian Library Network, which connects many libraries across Bavaria.

State-Funded Bavarian Regional Libraries

Several other state-funded libraries in Bavaria are part of the Bavarian State Library's system. These include libraries in cities like Amberg, Passau, Regensburg, and the Bamberg State Library.

History of the Library

The Bavarian State Library started in 1558 as the court library of Duke Albrecht V. It was first located in his old palace in Munich.

The Duke bought two big collections of books to start: one from a lawyer named Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter, which had many old manuscripts and books on different subjects. The other was from a rich man named Johann Jakob Fugger, who had agents collect over 10,000 books and manuscripts from all over Europe! Fugger also bought the amazing private library of Hartmann Schedel, a doctor and humanist.

The first librarian, Aegidius Oertel, started in 1561. The library was mostly used by the Jesuits, a religious order.

William V continued to grow the collection, buying more books, including a collection of music prints. By 1600, the library had 17,000 books!

Around 1803, many monasteries and churches in Bavaria were closed, and their books (about 550,000 volumes and 18,600 manuscripts) were added to the library. This made it much bigger!

In 1827, plans began for a grand new building for the library. The construction started in 1832 and was finished in 1843.

In 1919, the library officially got its current name: the Bavarian State Library.

During World War II, the library suffered a lot. Even though many books were moved to safety, over 500,000 books were lost, and 85% of the building was destroyed. After the war, starting in 1946, the library began the long process of rebuilding and bringing its collections back. The reconstruction of the building was finally finished in 1970.

In 1988, a new book storage facility was opened in Garching to hold even more books.

The Bavarian State Library has also been a leader in digital projects. In 1997, the Munich Digitization Center started scanning books. Now, you can find the library's entire collection of printed materials online! They also offer a "Digitisation on Demand" service, where you can ask for books published between 1500 and 1900 to be scanned.

In 2007, the library announced a partnership with Google Book Search to digitize books that are no longer protected by copyright. In 2008, the library was named "Library of the Year" in Germany.

In 2012, a scholar found some ancient, never-before-published writings by a theologian named Origen of Alexandria among the library's manuscripts. How cool is that?

Returning Books

Since 2003, the Bavarian State Library has been working hard to return books that were taken illegally, especially during the Nazi era. For example, in 2015, they returned a special manuscript called the Plock Pontifical to Poland. It had been stolen by the Nazis in 1940.

The library has checked over 60,000 books in its collection and found about 500 that were acquired unlawfully. They have returned many books, including 78 volumes from Thomas Mann's research library to an archive in Switzerland in 2007. They are still working to return more books to their rightful owners.

See also

• State libraries of Germany
• German National Library
• Google Books Library Project
• Virtual Library of Musicology
• Books in Germany