The Deputy Directors of Administration and Construction, 19th and 20th Century Materials, and Special Collections oversee a staff of 283 employees in fourteen different library departments.
Collections
Jagiellonian Library is one of the largest and most famous libraries in Poland; over its history it has received many donations and inherited many private collections. Its collection contains 1,503,178 volumes of monographs, 557,199 volumes of periodicals, 104,012 early printed books, 3,586 incunabula, 24,258 manuscripts, 12,819 maps, 35,105 music scores, and 77,336 microforms. Among its music scores are many of Mozart's original autographs. Notable rare books owned by the library include:
The beginning of the Jagiellonian Library is traditionally considered the same as that of the entire university - in the year 1364; however instead of having one central library it had several smaller branches at buildings of various departments. After 1775, during the reforms of Komisja Edukacji Narodowej, which established the first Ministry of Education in the world, various small libraries of the University were formally centralized into one public collection in Collegium Maius. During the partitions of Poland, the library continued to grow thanks to the support of such people as Jerzy Samuel Bandtkie, Karol Józef Teofil Estreicher and Karol Estreicher. Its collections were made public in 1812. Since 1932, it has had the right to receive a copy of any book issued by Polish publishers within Poland. In 1940, the library finally obtained a new building of its own. During the Second World War, library workers cooperated with underground universities. Since the 1990s, the library's collection is increasingly digital.
Building
The current building of the library located at Al. Mickiewicza 22 was constructed in the years 1931-1939 and expanded twice, in the years 1961-1963 and 1995-2001.
Thefts from the collections
There has been endemic theft of incunabula and antiquarian books from the Library. One of the worst such outbreaks in Poland was made public in April 1999. It included the theft of works by Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Bessarion. Part of the stolen haul turned up in the German auction house, Reiss & Sohn. It remains unclear who was behind the operation.