Austrian National Library (ONB)

The Austrian National Library (ONB) is the main scientific library of the Republic of Austria. With a history dating back to the 14th century, the Austrian National Library’s collections contain a significant part of the world’s cultural heritage. The Austrian National Library is required by media law to receive a copy of every publication appearing in Austria. The library has a long tradition in the preservation of information and its obligations also comprise preserving and making accessible large quantities of resources.

In addition the Austrian National Library acts as a research centre and has been involved in numerous national and international digital library initiatives. The library has been a partner in several projects funded by the European Commission in FP4, FP5, FP6 and FP7, as well as in the eContent and eContentplus Programmes, recently including IMPACT, PLANETS, DELOS, BRICKS, TELplus and Europeana v.1.0. The library is strongly involved in the Commission’s European Digital Library initiative and acts a project coordinator of EuropeanaConnect which is a core project in the actual implementation of Europeana.

Over the last years ONB has been a relevant partner on the organisation and implementation of relevant events in the digital library and digital preservation domain, such as ECDL. In 2010 ONB will be co-host and co-organisator of IPRES 2010, the leading digital preservation conference.

Apart from being partner in bigger events, ONB is regularly involved in the coordination and set up of outreach and  events on-site in Vienna but also in external destinations – such as the organisation of a four day digital preservation training course in Sofia.

The library’s R&D and Digital Preservation departments do not only bring many years of experience in the area of digital libraries, digital repositories, web archiving and digital preservation but also in the actual dissemination research outcomes for a broader and as well as for a specialist public.