Library
The holdings of the library, together with those of the archive, form the documentation pillar of the VWI and thus represent the research infrastructure of the VWI.
The library primarily serves the institute's own research and communication purposes but is also available to the interested public as part of a regulated public service. It is a reference facility which, after thirteen years of collection development as a One Person Library (OPL) in part-time form, comprises the following collections: more than 16,500 print media, a small audio-visual collection with approx. 130 media and approx. 200 resources from the area of Open Access resources, i.e. a total of approx. 17,000 media.
Monographs, publication series and periodicals in printed form make up the majority of the collection, which consists of new acquisitions, permanent loans from the library holdings of the Simon Wiesenthal Archive (SWA) and, not least, donations. The selection, acquisition, cataloguing, preservation and provision of media is carried out in accordance with the library's collection guidelines and serves to fulfil internal and external research requirements as well as to prepare the Institute's educational tasks.
Due to the structural conditions, the library only has closed stacks. The holdings can be searched using the library's own online search engine; in addition, the entire, already catalogued holdings are integrated into the OBV (Austrian Library Network) search engine.
Users also have the option of using the Collections tool to conduct focussed research. New acquisitions, the library's audiovisual media, the already catalogued book holdings of the permanent loans from the Simon Wiesenthal Archive and open access resources can be searched specifically via the Collections and Sub-collections tabs of the online search engine.
