page_title: Free University of Berlin
section_title: Libraries
hierarchical_section_title: Free University of Berlin / Campuses / Libraries
caption_attribution_description: Philologische Bibliothek der FU Berlin
context_page_description: The Free University of Berlin is a research university in Berlin, Germany. The Free University of Berlin is one of eleven elite German research universities in the German Universities Excellence Initiative. Free University of Berlin is consistently ranked among Germany's top ten universities overall, with particular strengths in the arts & humanities followed by the social sciences internationally. These programs are highly competitive, such as the program in Political Science is ranked number 19 worldwide according to the QS ranking.
  The Free University was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period as a de facto western continuation of the Frederick William University, which was in East Berlin and faced strong communist repression; its name refers to West Berlin's status as part of the Western Free World, in contrast to the communist-controlled university in East Berlin.
  In 2008, in a joint effort, The Free University of Berlin, along with the Hertie School of Governance, and WZB Social Science Research Center Berlin, created the Berlin Graduate School for Transnational Studies.
context_section_description: With an inventory of 8.5 million volumes and over 25,000 journals distributed in the central university library (UB) and 49 specialized libraries of the institutes, the library system of the FU is the biggest in Germany. Items published since 1990 are fully digitalized and accessible through an OPAC. The UB is granted the status United Nations Depository Library and is linked to the global library system of the UN under direction of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library in New York. The European Union also uses the UB as a European Documentation Center.
  As part of the library of the UN and the EU, it contains all publications of the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council, the International Court of Justice as well as publications from the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
  Although the UB is generally a lending library, some smaller libraries of the departments are so called Präsenzbibliotheken, where students are only able to read books or journals.
  Since 2005, the FU creates a new library with about 12,250 m² of usable space. It is planned to include all libraries of the natural science departments and the smaller institutes in the humanities (e.g. Egyptology). The projected costs are around 51 million euros. Construction work started in March 2012 with plans on finishing at the end of 2014.
caption: Interior of the Philological Library designed by Sir Norman Foster
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