The history of the Klaipėda University Library starts with 1991, the year of the establishment of Klaipėda University. The Library operates as an independent KU unit in accordance with its own regulation. On February 3, 2025, it became the Klaipėda University Library and Scientific Information Center. At present, it has branches in different places of the Klaipėda City.
The KU Library consists of three main units:
- User Servise Group:
- Library of the Baltic Regional Institute of History and Archaeology;
- Faculty of Marine Technology and Natural Sciences Library:
- Natural Sciences Library,
- Marine Technology Library,
- Library of the Faculties of Social and Humanities, Health Sciences;
- Scholarly Communication Group;
- Information Resources Formation Group;
- Rare Documents Sector:
- Dr. Kazys Pemkus Library - Archive,
- Lithuania Minor Archive.
- Rare Documents Sector:
The Library is proud of its rare publications on the history of Samogitia and Lithuania Minor stored in Dr. Kazys Pemkus library-archives, the Archives of Lithuania Minor, and the Archives of Culture and Arts of Lithuanian emigrants in the Main Library. The majority of those publications are donations of Lithuanian emigrants from abroad.
In November 2024, the Library adopted the new library system ALMA and began working with it instead of the ALEPH system used in 2015-2024. Information about traditional print books, journals and subscribed electronic information resources in the Library's collections is available to users via the Virtual Library.
The Library collection consists from 156 730 titles (300 098 copies) of print books, periodicals, rare documents and manuscripts. They are acquired taking into account the study programs and research areas at the University.
The University subscribes to 30 databases and provides the University community with access to:
- 27996 full-text journals,
- 526087 e-books,
- 95397 other documents,
- 59225 LSD standards.
The University's scientific production and students theses are registered and stored in the research management system KU DSpace-CRIS, implemented at the University at the end of 2022.
The KU Library participated in various projects:
- eMoDB.LT3: Opening the Online Research Databases for Lithuania – Stage 3 (2015 to 2020)
- eMoDB.LT2: Opening of the Online Research Databases for Lithuania – Stage 2 (2012 – 2015)
- eMoDB.LT: Opening of Online Research Databases for Lithuania (2009 – 2012)
- Renovation of data storage of Klaipėda University Library (VP2-1.1-ŠMM-06-V-01-005; 2012 to 2013).
The KU Library is a member of the following national and international library organisations:
- LBD (Lithuanian Librarians Association)
- Lithuanian Academic Library Directors’ Association (LABA)
- LMBA (Lithuanian Research Library Consortium)
- eLABa Consortium (The Lithuanian Academic e-Library)
- eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries)
