Swiss National Library
Hallwylstrasse 15
3003 Bern
Switzerland
Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel
Pertuis-du-Sault 74
2000 Neuchâtel
Swiss National Sound Archives
Via Soldino 9
6900 Lugano
+41 58 462 89 35 (NL Bern) / +41 58 466 70 60 (Dürrenmatt Centre) / +41 58 465 73 44 (Swiss National Sound Archives)
Damian Elsig
Alfred Oeschger (1900-1963), Emil Hostettler (1887-1972) and Josef Kaufmann (1882-1962)
1895
Established in 1895, the Swiss National Library (NL) is part of the Federal Office of Culture, which is attached to the Federal Department of the Interior. There are three sites, the main building in Bern, the Dürrenmatt Centre in Neuchatel, and since January 1st 2016, the Swiss National Sound Archives in Lugano.
The NL’s mandate is to collect, catalogue and preserve Helvetica as well as make them available to the public, now and in the future. The term Helvetica covers:
This mandate includes “digitally born” publications such as, for example, e-books, e-journals, sound and websites.
Founded in 1895, the Swiss National Library was established at a time when modern Switzerland was still defining its institutions and cultural memory. Its first home was strikingly modest: a four-room flat at Christoffelgasse 7 in central Bern. The task entrusted to it, however, was anything but modest. In 1894, Parliament asked the new library to collect publications connected with Switzerland since the foundation of the federal state in 1848, known as Helvetica.
