Contemporary Art at the SLUBto top
Ever since its establishment in 1556, collecting literature on art and art history has belonged to the SLUB Dresden’s tradition. In 1983, the library became the "Central Library for Art and Music of the GDR," following a pronouncement as early as 1966, which declared its function as a state collection focusing on the Visual Arts. Thus, even prior to 1990, the library was able to continually develop its collection of literature on contemporary art and art history.
In 1993, the special interest collection for “Contemporary Art since 1945, Photography, Industrial Design and Commercial Graphic Arts" (SSG 9.11) was established. This was made possible by a special German Research Foundation (DFG) program, which provides nationwide support to libraries in Germany (Committee on Scientific Library Services and Information Systems). The SLUB aims to keep its collection of national and international (European and North American) literature on these topics as complete as possible. Our goal is to have at least one copy of every academic publication available to library users in Germany. We intend to not only take the needs of current research into consideration, but to assess probable needs for literature in the future, and collect these accordingly (function as a “reservoir”).