About us

The University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt (ULB) functions as central institution of the Martin- Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg and is responsible for providing information to approximately 20,000 students and over 4,000 employees as well as the general public, to which it is open for use.

As the state library of Saxony-Anhalt, the library extensively collects and preserves literature from and about the central German region and houses an substantial regionally relevant map collection.

Its holdings of almost 5 million items include more than 26,000 periodicals in print or electronic form as well as 290,000 micro-materials. The approx. 1,400 workstations are scattered throughout the locations of the branch libraries. Delivery services and interlibrary loan services further facilitate accessibility of literature.

In its more than 300-year history, the library has also been able to acquire a rich, historically significant collection. The historical holdings are being gradually digitised within the scope of projects and consequently made available for use free of charge.

These and other open-access holdings and research data can be used via the Share_it repository.

At our library, the subject information service Middle Easter, North Africa and Islamic Studies is operated, including for example the virtual subject library MENAlib and the repository MENAdoc. They provide researchers with predominantly specialised, original language literature.

The ULB also offers training and advice on topics relating to the use of the collections, research, academic publishing and research data management.

It is furthermore integrated into the Common Library Network (GBV) and uses the acquisition and cataloguing modules of the library software PICA. The library extensively supports open access publishing and thus themself prefers open source products for its software solutions.