Libraries

The Central Library

The Aristotle University Library was founded in 1927. It is the second largest library in Greece after the National Library, and the largest and best organized library in Northern Greece. It is housed in the library building at the centre of the university campus, and together with the departmental libraries it comprises the A.U.Th. library system. It contains approximately 800,000 book titles and 300,000 volumes of periodicals and it subscribes to 3,500 periodical titles from all over the world.

The Central Library has two reading rooms, one for students and one for the teaching and research staff of the university.

• The students reading room can be used by any student who brings and reads his books. It has a capacity of about 1,300 people.
• The teaching staff reading room is mainly used by the teaching staff. For a student to use it, s/he must show a special note by his/her supervisor stating the project s/he has undertaken and for which the use of the teaching, staff reading room is necessary.

Departmental libraries operate reading rooms whose opening hours are regulated according to the needs of students and staff and the available support staff.

Access to and use of information in the A.U.Th. Library is open to all students. Since 1976, the Library is a member of the International Federation of Library Associations, an international network that facilitates the lending and borrowing of books from libraries all over the world. It can also request PhD dissertations in microfilm, photocopies of papers in periodicals and any other material.

The Central Library facilities also house the Online Computer Library Centre that has provided for the electronic integration of all A.U.Th. libraries. This centre has allowed access to bibliographic databases, as well as book and periodicals search not only in A.U.Th. libraries but in other university libraries in Greece and abroad.

More specifically, the network provides the following services through most A.U.Th. libraries:

• On line connection and search in book and periodical lists in the university of Thessaloniki;
• Access to bibliographic databases in CD ROM;
• Book search in about 1,000 other libraries in Greece and abroad;
• Access to the Internet and use of its services;
• Interlibrary loan services. All services are provided free of charge, except for the interlibrary loan service, for which the user is charged with the postal expenses. The address of the A.U.Th. Library System on the Internet is http://web.lib.auth.gr.