Descriptions of Collections

The Newspaper Collection consists of Estonian and foreign language newspapers from the 17th century to the present day. The collection also includes archival copies of newspapers published in Estonia. The current year’s issues are available in the Newspapers and Journals Reading Room. 

The Dissertation Collection consists of dissertations, autoabstracts, master’s theses, award theses, diploma theses, offprints and other research papers from the beginning of the 16th century to the present day. The collection includes archival copies of publications published in Estonia. All dissertations defended at the University of Tartu since 2004 are available electronically.

The collection designation is Diss.

The Collection of Publications in Estonian consists of books and periodicals published in the Estonian language since 1861. Estonian publications that have been received as legal deposit copies since 1997 belong to the Estonian National Archival Collection.

The Archival Collection consists of publications published in Estonia (regardless of language) and in Estonian (regardless of the place of publication) since 1861. The archival editions can be used if there are no other copies available for loan in the library. The legal deposit copies of online publications and original publication materials necessary for research and artistic creation can be consulted at an authorised workplace in accordance with the Legal Deposit Copy Act.

The collection designation is ARH.

The Estica Collection consists of publications published in Estonia in foreign languages, as well as foreign language (mainly German and Russian) literature on Estonia, former Baltic Governorates, i.e., Estonia, Livonia and Courland. The cut-off year for the collection is 1945. Publications published before 1711 belong to the Rare Book Collection.

The collection designation is Est.

The rarest part of the Photograph Collection consists of daguerreotypes, but also paper photographs and photogravures by the versatile English scientist and inventor of negative-positive process William Henry Fox Talbot from the mid-19th century, and the stereograph collection of Edmund Russow, professor of botany at the University of Tartu, from the late 19th century. The main part of the collection consists of portraits, topographical views and chronicle shots reflecting the history of the University of Tartu and Estonian science and culture. Photographs can also be found in personal archives. The collection comprises over 67,000 items, a part of which has been digitised.

The Rare Book Collection consists of early publications published before 1701, Estica publications published before 1711 and publications in Estonian published before 1861 that have been separated from the main collection for better preservation, more detailed bibliographic description and for research purposes. The collection also includes other rare and valuable books: first editions of scientific and literary classics, pioneering works in history, outstanding examples of book art and bookbinding, books published or survived in few copies, as well as those that have belonged to prominent personalities, portrait engraving albums, etc.

The collection retains the general shelving arrangement of the library. 

The call number prefix is R.

The Collection of Audio and Video Recordings consists of vinyl records (in different sizes, about 6,900 items), CDs (ca 25,800 items), DVDs (ca 2,280 items), videotapes (ca 400 items) and audiotapes (ca 2,200 items). A separate archival collection has been created of Estonian audio and video recordings received as deposit copies since 1997.

The Collection of Audio Recordings covers all areas of music, including Estonian music and recordings with Estonian performers.

In addition to those released in Estonia, the Collection of Video Recordings also includes documentaries, musical films and feature films released abroad. The film and audio archive consists of materials pertaining to the university recorded by the UT Multimedia Department and educational films produced both at the University of Tartu and in the Soviet Union, as well as unique donations such as the documentary film material on contemporary Estonian history donated to the University of Tartu in 1999 by Irmgard and Bengt von zur Mühlen.

The Map Collection consists of maps and atlases regardless of the place of publication. Maps can also be found in other collections: the Collection of Publications in Estonian, the Collection of Books in Foreign Languages, the Estica Collection and the Meteorological Observatory’s Collection. Rare maps belong to the Rare Book Collection.

The most valuable part of the Art Collection is the collection of Western European and Baltic German prints and drawings from the 15th to the 19th century, including such masters as Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Younger, Lucas van Leyden, Marcantonio Raimondi, Rembrandt, William Hogarth, Adam Friedrich Oeser, Karl August Senff, Johann Wilhelm Krause and others. The pride of the small collection of paintings (82 works) are the five portraits by the German painter Franz Gerhard von Kügelgen. The main part of the Bookplate Collection (over 4,800) consists of late 19th-century and early 20th-century Russian bookplates that were acquired with the collection of Ernst Jürgenson. In the present day, the Bookplate Collection is expanded primarily with the works of Estonian artists. The Art Collection comprises over 16,000 works, a part of which is digitised.

The Manuscript Collection consists of Western European and Oriental manuscript fragments and codices starting from the 8th and the 9th centuries, as well as heraldic documents, Estonian and Livonian legal and historical sources and other manuscripts of cultural and scientific value. There are also numerous autographs and correspondences of scholars, literates, musicians and statesmen from the 16th and later centuries (Philipp Melanchthon, Immanuel Kant, Georg Philipp Telemann, Karl Morgenstern and many others). The larger and continuously growing part consists of the personal archives of the University of Tartu professors and lecturers and the archival collections of institutions and organisations. The collection comprises almost 42,000 items and is partly digitised. 

Memorial Collection of Pavel Aleksandrov

The collection of Lieutenant General Pavel Konstantinovich Aleksandrov (1808–1857) arrived at the library in 1832. It consists of two collections: the so-called Great Library that belonged to the president of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Johann Albrecht Korff and the library of the Marble Palace that belonged to Count Grigory Orlov. Aleksandrov inherited both collections from his father, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich. He donated most of the books to the University of Helsinki, while others were given to the University of Tartu. The collection comprises nearly 3,000 volumes of publications from the 16th to the 18th centuries, mainly in two fields – law and diplomacy – but also history, philosophy and political economy. 

The collection designation is Alxd.

Memorial Collection of Karl Ernst von Baer

The University of Tartu purchased the collection of embryological literature of Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876), the founder of descriptive and comparative embryology, in the years 1870–1877, and it was catalogued in the Institute of Comparative Anatomy in 1881. Roughly a fourth of the collection was lost during the evacuation during the First World War, with older and more valuable books being lost in later years as well. The collection of nearly 900 volumes was transferred to the library from the Chair of Histology in 1999.

The collection designation is Baer. 

Memorial Collection of Gustav Bergmann

The collection of Gustav Bergmann (1749–1814), the pastor of Rūjiena, was sold to the library by his son in 1837. It includes five incunables, rare editions of the Bible (incl. the first vernacular Bibles), prayer and hymn books, catechisms and about 100 dissertations. Including the multilingual editions of the Lord’s Prayer, there is literature in over a hundred languages. The collection comprises over 700 volumes with nearly 1,200 titles.

The collection designation is Bergm.

Memorial Collection of Ferdinand Giese

Johann Emmanuel Ferdinand Giese (1781–1821) was a professor of chemistry at the University of Tartu from 1814 to 1821. His 1,114-volume collection of chemistry literature, which also includes rare works on alchemy, was received as an inheritance in 1821. 

The collection designation is Giese. 

Memorial Collection of Richard Hausmann
Professor Richard Gustav Gotthard Hausmann (1842–1918) of the University of Tartu lectured mainly on mediaeval history in the Baltic region, source studies and archaeology. This is reflected in his library, which was acquired through Justine von Seidlitz in 1918. The collection, which is divided into sections on Baltic history and general history, comprises over 4,000 volumes.

The collection designation is Hsm.

Memorial Collection of Georg Igelström

The library of Swedish Livonian nobleman Lieutenant General Count Georg Igelström (1810–1890) includes reference works, books on military affairs, maps and plans, but also books on history, art history and fiction. The collection was donated to the library by his nephew, secretary of the Estonian Knighthood Emil Igelström, in 1891. The collection comprises over 500 volumes.

The collection designation is Ig.

Memorial Collection of Friedrich Maximilian Klinger

The library of Friedrich Maximilian Klinger (1752–1831), a German writer who later served in the Russian civil service as the first curator of the University of Tartu (1803–1817), was donated to the library by his widow in 1844. The collection of almost 5,000 volumes contains mainly 17th–18th-century German, French and English literary classics, as well as a large amount of reference literature. 

The collection designation is Kling.

Memorial Collection of Professor Eerik Kumari

The collection of Professor Eerik Kumari (1912–1984), the founder of Estonian ornithology and nature conservation, includes literature on ornithology and nature conservation, specialist reference books from all over the world and all the Red Books published in the world during Kumari’s lifetime. The collection includes many inscriptions by world renowned scientists and writers. It was transferred to the library in 1985 as per the terms of her will. The collection consists of 13,295 items, including nearly 6000 offprints.

The collection designation is Kmr.

Memorial Collection of Karl Morgenstern

Johann Karl Simon Morgenstern (1770–1852), the first director of the University of Tartu library and a professor of rhetoric, classical philology, aesthetics, and history of art and literature, bequeathed his personal library to the university. This private collection, one of the largest of its time in Tartu, contains literature on philology, history and philosophy, including Greek and Roman classics, Greek and Latin grammars and dictionaries, works on archaeology and numismatics, German, English, French, Italian and Spanish fiction, catalogues of art galleries, etc. The library of over 11,000 volumes was handed over by his widow, Wilhelmine Morgenstern, in late 1852.

The collection designation is Mrg. 

Memorial Collection of Julius Mägiste

Julius Mägiste (1900–1978) was an Estonian linguist, doctor of philology, professor of Finnic languages at the University of Tartu from 1929 to 1944 and associate professor of Finno-Ugric languages at the University of Lund from 1950 to 1967. In 1989 his library was donated by his children living in Sweden. It contains literature on general linguistics and Finno-Ugric languages, foreign-language linguistic periodicals, and Estonian fiction published in Sweden and Canada. The collection is about 5,500 copies of books and dissertations.

The collection designation is Mäg.

Memorial Collection of Alexander Neustroyev

The collection of the well-known Russian bibliophile and bibliographer Alexander Nikolayevich Neustroyev (1825–1902) contains literature on the Russian language, literature and history (research studies, chronicles, legal texts, biographies), but also on church history, archaeology, ethnography and numismatics. There is a large amount of reference literature (dictionaries, bibliographies, catalogues of libraries and bookshops). The collection mainly contains Russian books published in the second half of the 19th century, as well as old chronicles. After Neustroyev’s passing, his son and daughter donated his collection of nearly 3,000 volumes to the University of Tartu library in 1904.

The collection designation is Neust.

Memorial Collection of Voldemar Wadi

The collection of Voldemar Wadi (1891–1951), a medical doctor and professor at the University of Tartu, includes medical literature in German and Russian. A special feature of the collection is the collection of sheet music, which runs to nearly two hundred volumes. The size of the collection is 1,998 volumes.

The collection designation is Vadi.

Memorial Collection of Karl Weltmann

Karl Weltmann (1878–1961) worked at the University of Tartu Library for thirty years, from 1944 to 1949 as its director. A passionate bibliophile, he devoted much of his life to collecting books. His collection consists mainly of history books, with most of the 19th-century literature on the Baltics in German, a third in Russian and 3% in Estonian. There is an abundance of reference works, encyclopaedias and dictionaries. According to Weltmann's will, both the books and a bibliographical card index of about 120,000 items were transferred to the university library after his death. The collection consists of 5,278 items.

The collection designation is Wlt.

The Meteorological Observatory’s Collection consists of meteorological yearbooks of different countries, major geophysical journals and books, and numerous weather observation maps. The library of the Meteorological Cabinet of the Meteorological Observatory of the University of Tartu, founded in 1876, was handed over to the Estonian Academy of Sciences in 1948 and its acquisition was discontinued. In 1952 it was deposited with the University of Tartu and in 1993 it was officially returned to the University. Its total size is 10,885 items.

The collection designation is Metobs.

The Sheet Music Collection was formed on the basis of the holdings of the Tartu Academic Singing Society (Akademischer Gesangverein in Dorpat, 1857–1893), to which sheet music from other collections was added. The collection is expanded primarily by sheet music published in Estonia and donations. In addition to the main collection of sheet music, there are also scores (including songbooks) and manuscripts in the Collection of Books in Foreign Languages, the Collection of Publications in Estonian, Estica Collection, Memorial Collections and the Manuscript Collection. A separate archival collection has been created of Estonian scores that have been received as deposit copies since 1997. The size of the collection is nearly 11,000 items.

The collection designation is No.

The Pamphlet Collection consists of posters, slogans, announcements, advertisements, lyric sheets, invitations, name cards, newspaper clippings, etc. combined into thematic folders. The collection is expanded primarily by legal deposit copies of publications published in Estonia, purchases and donations. The easiest way to get an overview of the pamphlets is to search for the keyword “pisitrükised” in the e-catalogue ESTER.

The collection designation is PT.

The publications of the League of Nations arrived at the library in the years 1921–1940, when Estonia was a member of this international organisation. From the 1950s onwards, the League’s publications were kept in the Restricted Books Department. The literature was transferred into the main collection in 1980, where it became a separate collection. The size of the collection is 3,728 units.

The collection designation is LN.

The collection consists of journals, periodicals of scientific institutions such as yearbooks, etc., including foreign-language serials published in Estonia. The collection also includes the first scholarly journals Le journal des sçavans starting from 1665 and Philosophical Transactions starting from 1665. 

The collection designation is Per.

The collection consists of books in foreign languages regardless of the place of publication, including publications published in Estonia. The collection is divided thematically into sections. Since 2013, the collection has been arranged in a format-numerical order.