The new library system in Wrocław University Library and FLAE Library

The Wrocław University Library (WUL) together with 32 specialist libraries, forms a unified library and information system for the University of Wrocław. The Library’s resources and services are used not only by students, doctoral students and academic staff, but also (thanks to its public library function) by school pupils, knowledge seekers, cultural institutions, researchers from the region, the whole country and abroad.

The traditions of the Wrocław University Library date back to 1811–1815, when the collections of two large academic libraries were merged: Leopoldina in Wrocław and Viadrina in Frankfurt, as well as the resources of numerous secularised Silesian monastery libraries. The rich collections of the Wrocław University Library were largely destroyed during World War II. The collection was rebuilt thanks to the transfer of the collections of the former City Library, incomplete collections, including the Piast library in Brzeg, fragments of the Milich library in Zgorzelec, the book collection of the Church of St. Peter and Paul in Legnica, and fragments of preserved provincial libraries from Silesia.

Currently, WUL is the largest academic library in Lower Silesia, collecting publications from all fields of knowledge, with particular emphasis on the humanities, social sciences, basic publications and encyclopaedias.

The pride of WUL is its unique special collections. The library has the largest collection of old prints in Poland and one of the largest in Europe (300,000 items), including 3,000 incunabula (the second largest collection in Poland), the largest collection of richly illuminated medieval manuscripts in the country (3,000 items), as well as magnificent collections of music, cartography and iconography. An important part of the collection is also made up of Silesian-Lusatian prints — books and magazines published both before and after 1945, the most valuable of which are Wratislaviana, i.e. prints related to Wrocław.

Thanks to their uniqueness and high substantive value, the collections of the WUL have significantly enriched the resources of the National Library’s combined catalogues, expanding them with valuable (often unique) scientific, cultural and historical materials.

As a result of the system’s implementation in subsequent libraries (including the WUL), the scope of cooperation between the institutions participating in the project has expanded, with the main goal being real-time co-cataloguing according to uniform cataloguing rules (using National Library Descriptors). Thanks to the implementation of the new system, the resources of the katalogi.bn.org.pl search engine have been enriched, currently bringing together the catalogues of, among others: the central state library, the Jagiellonian Library (together with the faculty and institute libraries of the Jagiellonian University), academic libraries, including the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Bronisław Czech Academy of Physical Education in Kraków, Gdynia Maritime University, Fahrenheit University libraries (including the University of Gdańsk), the University Library in Warsaw, provincial public libraries in Olsztyn, Lublin, Wrocław, Szczecin, Łódź and Kielce, as well as town libraries in Elbląg, Gdynia and Wrocław. In total, the combined catalogues are co-created by 153 libraries that implemented an integrated resource management system in 2022–2025 as part of the National Reading Development Programme 2.0 or purchased it independently by joining the co-cataloguing with the National Library. The combined catalogues currently contain 70 million items.

The National Library, as the operator of Priority 1, Intervention Direction 1.2. Development of a nationwide library network through an integrated library resource management system as part of the multi-annual programme ‘National Programme for the Development of Reading 2.0 for 2021–2025’, covers the costs of maintaining the system.