National Library of Technology in Prague (Národní technická knihovna, NTK), previously named State Technical Library (Státní technická knihovna) was founded in 1718 as a book collection of the first Professor of Engineering Christian Willenberg (1655-1731). NTK is the central professional library under the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic. It provides information services to those in higher education, research and development.
NTK is also a public library dedicated to science and technology. As such it collects and administers state-funded Czech and foreign literature and other information pertaining to natural sciences, social sciences, natural technologies, and social technologies.
At NTK, there are over 1.2 million volumes of books, journals, newspapers, scholarly studies, trade information, and electronic documents. The annual acquisition is about 10,000 volumes. Part of the collection (Czech historical journals and textbooks of technical universitites), was digitized. The historical collection of books and journals from 1500 to 1920 contains over 70,000 items.
The library staff of 160 serves over 11,200 registered users (about 50% of them are students).
NTK is the host of the Czech National ISSN Centre (ČNS ISSN), which assigns ISSN numbers and registers serial publications in the Czech Republic and a workplace for The Digital Library for Grey Literature.
NTK is also a centre of the digital document delivery system, Virtual Polytechnical Library which works on the basis as a multifunctional centre of information services. It works as a co operative development of decentralized collections of periodicals specialized by subject and document type. This system has a special union catalogue of about 50 Czech libraries collections and makes ordering possible for registered Czech users.
NTK cooperates with other libraries and institutions in many fields. For example: shared cataloguing, the Union catalogue of the Czech Republic, shared creation of Czech authority files, and cooperative association for the purchase of electronic information resources for selected Czech libraries (Science Direct, Springer Link, InterScience, Kluwer, and more than 70 members institutions).
On the 9th of September 2009 NTK opened up a new library building, the largest and most modern library building in the Czech Republic.
National Library of Technology
Library Website