1877: Jakob Schipper, the author of Englische Metrik (A History of English Versification), applies for funds to buy a book collection for the English Seminary (today: Department of English and American Studies) at Vienna University: The one-off grant of 400 gulden and the annual stipend of 150 gulden form the basis of today's Library and make it one of the oldest English Studies Libraries in a German-speaking country.
1885 : The English Seminary moves into the new University Building in Vienna's Ringstrasse. The Library's holdings are re-inventorized. The new library classification introduced is used until 1962.
1901: A new card catalogue is introduced which is used until 1962.
1962-1997: The Department of English and the Library move to the NIG (Neues Institutsgebaeude) in Universitaetsstrasse 7. The Library becomes an open-access library. The holdings are again reclassified and recatalogued. The classification system has survived until today.
1974-1997: The American Studies section of the Library is built up in Lammgasse 8.
1983: The Departmental Library becomes a Subject Library and thus a sublibrary of the University Library(Fachbibliothek; later renamed Fachbereichsbibliothek).
1997: The Library moves to its present location: all subsections of the library are finally united in one building, thus allowing readers to access items from all our collections at the same time.
ca. 2005-2018: The part of the holdings acquired in the English and American Studies Library during the Second World War which has been identified as unlawfully acquired stock of the library of the All Peoples Association, which is without heirs, by the University Library Provenance Research Project (Subject and Departmental Libraries) is officially restituted to the Austrian National Fund and repurchased in 2017 and shelved in the open access area of the library. (Shelf: APA).
English and American Studies Library
Campus of the University of Vienna
Spitalgasse 2-4, Door 8.2
1090 Wien
T: +43-1-4277-16531 bibliothek.anglistik@univie.ac.at
