Brief history of the Library
The origins of the Central Mathematical Library operating at the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences date back to the mid-20th century. In 1948, the State Institute of Mathematics was established (since 1952 operating under its current name), and a library was established there. Already at the beginning of its activity, the facility was enriched with the collections of the Mathematical Cabinet of the Warsaw Scientific Society, which were moved to the headquarters at Śniadeckich St. 8 in Warsaw. The above collection consisted primarily of a collection of books that Samuel Dickstein (1851-1939), a mathematician, educator and historian of science, donated to TNW in 1914, and a collection left by his friend, Aleksander Czajewicz (1843-1926), also a mathematician.
Pursuant to the Regulation of the Minister of Culture and Art of November 24, 1998, both mathematicians' collections were included in the National Library Resource, which the Central Mathematical Library co-created together with the resources of 54 other libraries in the country.
The institution obtained the statute of the central library on the basis of Order No. 1 of the Ministry of Culture and Art, Science, Higher Education and Technology and the Scientific Secretary of the Polish Academy of Sciences of April 26, 1979. Carrying out its tasks in this area, the Central Mathematical Library collects, develops, stores and makes available collections in the field of mathematics and its applications.
Its collection includes over 175,000 printed books and magazines. In addition to the collection from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries of historical importance, the library constantly supplements and expands its resources with the latest and highly indexed mathematical publications of leading academic publishers, including: Springer, Wiley, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, SIAM and De Gruyter. In addition to professional printed literature, the unit provides extensive collections of magazines and electronic books, which allows access to the full text of many thousands of archival and latest scientific publications. The library also provides access to renowned reference databases: SCOPUS, Web of Science and the mathematical abstract database MathSciNet, where publications from journals published by the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences are also indexed and reviewed. The Central Mathematical Library, collected in printed and electronic versions, makes its collections available not only to Polish and foreign researchers and students, but also to all interested parties not associated with the academic community.
On February 14, 2024, the Central Mathematical Library, after a positive opinion on the library's application by the Substantive Department of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the National Library of Poland, was incorporated into the nationwide library network.
