The collection focuses primarily on:

• literature in the social and cultural sciences
• interdisciplinary works

In recent years, the Central Library has primarily collected literature on the following topics:

• Library and Information Science
• Digital Humanities
• Game Studies
• Artificial Intelligence (in the context of information and social sciences)

Digital resources are available at any time via the Primo library portal and the Database Information System (DBIS). There, you can access a wide range of e-books, journals, databases, and streaming services.

You can view digitized collections in our Viewer.

The terms of use and an overview of our digital resources can be found on the University Library website.

The Central Library holds a number of physical collections worthy of preservation, including:

• Regional legal deposit copies for Berlin (1952–1994)
• University theses and publications from Freie Universität Berlin. Further information 
• Digital interview collections, including those on National Socialism and the Holocaust, and on the history of Freie Universität. Further information 
• Robert Lebeck Kiosk Collection
• Historical collections of socialist literature: Max Stein and Alfred Weiland
• Old legal dissertations from the 16th to the 19th century
• German school curricula from the second half of the 19th century, with a focus on Prussia
• Library of the Berlin Association of Homeopathic Physicians (permanent loan)
• Library of the Berlin Numismatic Society (permanent loan)