Zentralbibliothek Zürich
Encyclopedia
Library
In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...
of both the city
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
and the University of Zürich
University of Zurich
The University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 25,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new faculty of philosophy....
, housed in the Predigerkloster, the former Black Friars' abbey, in the old town's Rathaus quarter.
It was founded in 1914 by a merger of the former cantonal and city libraries. Its history ultimately goes back to the Stiftsbibliothek of the Grossmünster
Grossmünster
The Grossmünster is a Romanesque-style church in Zurich, Switzerland. It is one of the three major churches in the city . The core of the present building near the banks of the Limmat River was constructed on the site of a Carolingian church, which was, according to legend, originally commissioned...
abbey , first attested in 1259. Much of the abbey's library was lost in the Swiss Reformation, especially in an incident of book burning
Book burning
Book burning, biblioclasm or libricide is the practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, books or other written material and media. In modern times, other forms of media, such as phonograph records, video tapes, and CDs have also been ceremoniously burned, torched, or shredded...
on 14 September 1525, reducing it to a total inventory of 470 volumes. From 1532, Konrad Pellikan (1478–1556) began rebuilding the Stiftsbibliothek, especially with the purchase of Zwingli's private library, and the library catalogue in 1551 lists 770 volumes. The city library had been established in 1634, and its policy to allow access only to citizens of Zürich led to disputes with the University, which led to the establishment of a cantonal library in 1835, built from some 3,500 volumes with 14,000 titles of the Stiftsbibliothek, some 340 volumes of the recent University Library (since 1833) and some 1,700 volumes of the Gymnasiumsbibliothek (since 1827).
The Zentralbibliothek currently houses some 5.1 million items, among these 3.9 million printed volumes, 124,000 manuscripts, 243,000 maps and 560,000 microfiches.