The Olomouc Museum of Art Library

The Museum of Art professional library as an independent professional division which emerged after the institution became independent in 1990. Items concerning the history of art were selected and transferred from the collection of the library of the Regional Museum in Olomouc. From that moment on the purposeful acquisitions in the workplace began, with a focus on supplementing the basic literature in the field. The library has been expanded continuously via acquisitions, donations, estates and transfers from other professional institutions and the exchange service.

After more than twenty years of diligent professional work on acquisitions and organizing, and several years of moving the collection due to building work on the yard annex of the Museum of Art, the library is now a stabilized workplace. Its collection is professionally processed in the CLAVIUS library system. Concerning the structure of the collection, the total of 48,000 volumes is divided into books, catalogues, anthologies and yearbooks and the collection of periodicals. A great emphasis in the acquisition work is placed on adding to the division of professional catalogues. A separate professional part of the Museum of Art library collection is the collection of 20th Century Books focused on the literary avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s and partly on book covers of the 1960s. A part of the collection is the library of O.F. Babler, an important Olomouc translator, poet and bibliophile. 

The library has a reading room available to the public with access via the exhibition hall called Trojlodí, which is open to researchers each Wednesday (with exceptions - installations of exhibitions, school holidays) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Researchers may come at any other time on working days, based on an agreement with the library staff. It must be emphasized that materials may only be studied in the reading room, with the possibility of taking photos or scanning the documents. In the reading room researchers have access to the computer database of books. Each reader is obliged to become acquainted with the library rules during their first visit. The reading room capacity is 10 persons maximum.