Biblioteka Instytutu Botaniki w Krakowie, Kraków

Biblioteka Instytutu Botaniki w Krakowie is Poland’s largest specialist botanical library. Founded in 1953 through Professor Władysław Szafer’s efforts, it combines scientific literature with rare books, botanical atlases and an 1814 flora of the Tatras. Its present building stands behind the Lubicz 46 complex.

Biblioteka Instytutu Botaniki w Krakowie is a research library devoted to the plant world, and it grew into Poland’s largest specialist botanical library. It began in 1953 through the work of Professor Władysław Szafer, alongside the creation of the Polish Academy of Sciences’ botanical unit. Its foundation came from joining that new library with the existing collections of the Jagiellonian University’s plant-systematics department and Botanical Garden.

The library served both the Szafer Institute of Botany of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Jagiellonian University’s Institute of Botany until the thirty-first of May 2017. As publications accumulated, storage rapidly became a problem: periodicals and books moved into a new five-storey neighbouring building in 1968, and the transfer was completed the following year. At the turn of 2001 and 2002, the library moved into the newer building behind the complex at Lubicz 46.

Its two floors hold the lending desk, reading room, catalogues, staff spaces and compact collection storage. Inside are works on botany, fossil plants, fungi, ecology and conservation, alongside maps, botanical atlases and microfilms. The rare-book holdings include an 1814 flora of the Tatras, the earliest flora of those mountains in the collection, as well as richly illustrated plant atlases.