[2] In 1720, the Genevan theologian Ami Lullin acquired the Petau collection of illuminated manuscripts and left it to the library in 1756.

The Institut et Musée Voltaire was founded in 1954, Geneva's music library, now called La Musicale, in 1962, and the Centre d'iconographie in 1993.

In 2011, its Jean-Jacques Rousseau collections were included, jointly with those of the Bibliothèque publique et universitaire de Neuchâtel [fr], in the Unesco Memory of the World Register.

As well as 1,500 papyri and 380 medieval manuscripts, the Bibliothèque de Genève holds the papers of such Geneva personalities as John Calvin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, Édouard Naville, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze and Nicolas Bouvier.

It is located near the Conservatoire, the Victoria Hall and the Grand Théâtre, on the first floor of the Maison des arts du Grütli.

It includes, for example, photos by the Genevan photographer Frédéric Boissonnas of the Balkans, Greece and North Africa.

[9] The private library of Guillaume Favre (1770-1851) contains about 5,600 works, in over 12,000 volumes, on history, literature and ancient languages, still in their original setting in Parc La Grange.