Nereus

WU - Vienna University of Economics and Business

The WU Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and its library are over 100 years old.

Brief history

Its predecessor, the Imperial Export Academy, was established in 1898, with the aim of imparting knowledge to businessmen engaged in foreign trade especially to Eastern countries. In 1919, the Academy became a public university with now more than 20,000 students and 400 researchers.

The WU is the largest business and economics university in Europe and has 12 departments: Marketing, Finance and Accounting, Management, Strategic Management and Innovation, Cross-Border Business, Information Systems and Operations, Economics, Business, Employment and Social Security Law, Public Law and Tax Law, Social Sciences, Foreign Language Business Communication, and Statistics and Mathematics.

The library staff amounts to 45 FTE. The library provides 590 study places for users, including 60 study places with personal computers. Each student and staff member has access to the internet and the digital resources in the library.

Collections

The collection reflects the broad scholarly orientation and the history of the university. The stock is held at the main library and various branch libraries. It comprises more than 800,000 books, increasing by around 20,000 items a year, and 2,250 current periodicals. A European Documentation Centre is hosted by a branch library (Library of the Research Institute of European Affairs). The library maintains publications from international organizations as well, among others from OECD, ILO, UNCTAD, ECB, and ADB.

The library provides access to 95 databases. More than 9,000 electronic journals can be accessed in full text.

Institutional repositories

The library runs a special database, ePubWU, an open-access full text repository for working papers and PhD-theses written at the WU.