Our profile

We are here for you, whether you are a student, researcher or any other interested party. With our expertise and services, we seek to inspire, advance and encourage you to expand your knowledge and achieve your academic or scientific goals.

Know how: The ETH Library supports you with expertise, digital platforms and tools. We encourage you to use ETH Library @ swisscovery and the personal consultation offered by the experts or specialist staff on the various platforms.

Know more: You will find content relevant for your purposes in the form of books, databases, catalogues and collections as well as interdisciplinary content prepared as stories on Explora, for example, or as topic-focused tours.

Focus human: Whether fascinating people who have worked at ETH, the offers of the Thomas Mann and Max Frisch Archives, or lectures and publications by the ETH Library staff: let yourself be inspired by people and learn something new along the way.

As the central university library for ETH Zurich and the Swiss centre for scientific and technical information, it is our mission to ensure the provision of information to employees and students of ETH Zurich and other universities, to the interested public and to companies engaged in research and development. In addition, the ETH Library coordinates the curation and further development of the culturally and historically important collections at ETH Zurich. Besides this, it provides infrastructures and services for the open dissemination and long-term preservation of the research output of ETH Zurich.

As the globally networked knowledge hub of ETH Zurich, we aspire to be a trusted partner and service provider for research and teaching. We also seek to position ourselves as a customer-focused driving force for the generation and development of knowledge and the transfer of this knowledge within society.

At the ETH Library, you will find content primarily in these subjects:

  • Architecture and building sciences
  • Engineering sciences
  • Natural sciences and mathematics
  • System-oriented natural sciences
  • Management and social sciences

As the largest public natural science and technology library in Switzerland and a national centre for natural science and engineering information, our policy has always been and will always be to adapt in line with the constantly changing requirements and opportunities presented by the digital library.

We play an active role in shaping the paradigm shift under way in academic communication, and offer our customers the corresponding tools and skills needed for such communication. In this way, we are able to ensure that the ETH Library continues to develop into a networked, integrated, customer-focused and service-oriented library of the future.

In order to drive forward the change and development process, we will focus in the coming years on five strategic action areas, improving access to our products and services and developing customer-focused products and services, customer care teams, strategic alliances and a system for measuring productivity.

DownloadRead more in the executive summary (PDF, 1006 KB)

As a member of the national and international information science community, the ETH Library cooperates with partner institutions and is involved in various councils and associations. We regard strategic alliances and the maintenance of national and global networks as essential for further development of the library.

As an information service provider, the ETH Library puts its focus on certain strategic fields in the further development of its services. Our projects are geared to the needs of the Swiss and international science community.

We invite you to benefit from the expertise of the ETH Library staff, who use this expertise to make available, preserve and valorise the ETH Library’s holdings, collections and archives. We share and discuss this knowledge in publications and lectures.

Events

Network with others and learn new things at our events. Learn more about future and past events.


Contact

Head Office
  • +41 44 632 25 49
  • +41 44 632 13 57 (Fax)
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