Its collection numbers nearly nine million, making it one of the largest public archival centers in the Federal Republic of Germany.

[3] It is a special-interest collection library of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) focusing on "Contemporary Art after 1945" [4] and "History of Technology".

[6] Further services on the internet include, for example, the Kartenforum with historical maps of Saxony and the Fotothek, providing pictorial documents for research.

Also worth mentioning is the digitization of the electronic editions of August Wilhelm Schlegel's collection and illustrated magazines of classical modernism.

Today, there are more than 74,000 titles, nearly 92,000 volumes and approximately 1.5 million media items (images, maps, drawings) existent in the Digital Collections of the SLUB.

[12] The open source software Goobi, utilized for the digitization workflow, has been significantly refined to edit and display different media types.

By means of the DFG funding, the SLUB has established the Virtual Library focusing on Contemporary Art ViFaArt from January 2001 until 2004.

Since 1998, the DFG annually sponsors the SLUB's acquisition of foreign journals, monographs and microforms focusing on the history of technology.

Since the end of the 18th century – during the term of Johann Christoph Adelung – Saxonica have been collected systematically at the electoral library.

To collect and store items of literature, images and sound regarding Saxony as well as the development of the Sächsische Bibliographie are tasks accomplished by the Saxon State and University Library Dresden.

The SLUB's Map Forum is an information portal of libraries, museums and archives, supervised by the Deutsche Fotothek and sponsored by the DFG.

The department is closely intertwined with the Mediathek, containing recorded music, the Fotothek, containing music-iconographical material, and the manuscript collection, which also encompasses letters of musicians.

On more than 40,000 square metres, the building provides approximately 1,000 study desks, of which 200 are located in the main reading room.

The royal state library was founded in 1556, when Prince-Elector Augustus (ruled 1553–1586) started systematically to acquire learned books and literary works.

[15] When Frederick the Great of Prussia attacked Dresden in 1760, part of the library burned; there are singed volumes in the collection to this day.

Following the proclamation of the Weimar Republic in 1919, it officially became the Saxon State Library, with its strengths continuing to lie in the arts, humanities, social sciences, literature and linguistics.

With the onset of World War II, the most precious holdings of the State Library were dispersed to 18 castles and offices, away from any possible military objectives.

The losses include the major corpus of Tomaso Albinoni's unpublished music, though Georg Philipp Telemann's manuscripts were preserved (catalogued, 1983).

[citation needed] The library's copy of Sachsenspiegel, considered one of the most important manuscripts due to its historic significance in law and its illustrative quality, suffered from water damage.

Under the direction of Helene Benndorf, the reconstruction of the annihilated subject catalog took place, as well as the construction of the central catalogue of the university and the re-opening of the Patentschriftstelle.

After 1990, the TU Dresden was expanded to a comprehensive university and augmented by the branch libraries of law, business and economics.

With its big main reading room and its carrels, the central building provides excellent working conditions.

With regard to its comprehensive digitization activities, the library was honored in the context of Initiative Deutschland, Land der Ideen on 22 February 2009.