Founded in 1365, by Duke Rudolf, the Founder Vienna University Library is the oldest university library in the German-speaking world. Its history is closely connected with that of Vienna University.
The library’s mission, then and now, is to serve the needs of students, faculty and researchers at Vienna University as well as the general public. It is universal in character striving as far as possible for comprehensive collection development.
The library is strongly committed to the preservation and opening of its holdings and cultural heritage in the broadest sense, including the generation of databases and other electronic resources. Therefore, it seeks to co-operate and co-ordinate with other scientific libraries in Austria and Europe.