Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum

Overview

As a documentation centre for book culture, the Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum (German Book and Writing Museum) has been collecting, storing and cataloguing valuable testimonies of book, writing and paper culture for roughly 125 years now.
Founded in 1884, it was made a department of the Deutsche Bücherei Leipzig in 1950. It is the oldest museum in the world in its field, and the most important in terms of the quality and scope of its stocks. As a centre for both storage and communication, it makes a special contribution to the representation and discussion of book culture. The museum is a workshop for book research, providing the general public with information on books through the exhibitions it stages.

The museum's work is based around its large collections which have developed and expanded gradually over time. Featuring over one million objects, the collections permit an interdisciplinary approach to book and writing-related issues, taking the culture, media and communication history contexts into account.

As a research centre for book and paper history, the museum provides advice and information on the various specialist fields and makes its stocks, including its library of books about books, available for study purposes in the reading room. The Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum publishes the Leipzig Annual of Book History in conjunction with the Leipzig Working Group on the History of Books, and is also actively involved in the German Working Group on Paper History.

The 4th annex building of the German National Library in Leipzig will provide the Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum with attractive exhibition areas, a museum infrastructure, a new reading room and extended stacks. The museum will not be staging any exhibitions until the redesigned permanent exhibition is opened, scheduled for the end of 2010.

Archivalien und Dokumente zur Buchgeschichte
Bibliothek des Börsenvereins der Deutschen Buchhändler zu Leipzig
Bildarchiv
Fachbibliothek
Grafische Sammlung
Kulturhistorische Sammlung
Papierhistorische Sammlungen
Klemm-Sammlung
Sammlung Künstlerischer Drucke