The collections are mainly divided into printed works and manuscripts. The printed works are divided into those published before 1800 (early printed books) and those published after 1800. The printed works are divided into books, periodicals and various types of ephemeral prints.
The Ossolineum collections can be ordered in seven reading rooms. Many items, especially the oldest and most valuable ones, are available online in the DBC (Lower Silesian Digital Library) and on the Google Arts & Culture portal. Part of the collection is available only in electronic form (on DVDs) or in microforms (miniaturised photographic copies of documents that can be read on special equipment) in the Microforms and Digital Collections Division Reading Room.
As a result of the history of the National Ossolinski Institute, a large part of the pre-war Ossolineum collections are now located in Lviv. Below, under the heading Pre-war Ossolineum Collections in Lviv, we provide links to the catalogues of these collections, which are held at the Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv. In cooperation with the institutions of Lviv, objects from this historic collection are gradually being digitised and made available.
The largest is currently the Ossolineum Library Online Main Catalogue. It contains the following collections::
Although the Main Catalogue is constantly being updated with older and older publications, it is still not complete. If you wish to search the entire Ossolineum collection, you should consult the catalogues listed below.
Please note: All documents listed in the Online Main Catalogue should be ordered through this catalogue. Items not included in the Online Main Catalogue should be ordered via the paper form (available in the Reading Rooms) or the online form available via the button below.
Information on books and periodicals from the 19th and 20th centuries can be found in two scanned card catalogues:
Most of the early printed books from the Ossolineum collections are available online:
The manuscripts collected in the Ossolineum Library are divided into those that have been fully processed (bibliographic description is complete, some items have been microfilmed) and those that have been pre-processed (collected and recorded in the accession book):
Some manuscripts, especially from the pre-war Ossolineum collections, are available online in the Digital Resources Database and the Lower Silesia Digital Library (see above).
Detailed descriptions of the inventoried manuscripts can be found in the multi-volume printed Inventory. More information about this publication can be found on the website of the Manuscripts Division Reading Room.
After the war, only about 30% of the pre-war Ossolineum collections found their way to Wroclaw. The National Institute began to cooperate with the institutions in Lviv in order to make the pre-war collections available again to Polish readers. The collections created so far are