According to the current state of planning, the opening hours of the General Reading Room are to be extended Monday through Friday up to 22:00 as of 12 July. Having become obligatory in the meantime, the reservation of working places (online and using an app) has proven expedient. It is strongly approved by the library’s users and will be continued without changes – also beyond the Corona pandemic. The preliminary online user registration and the free-of-charge book delivery by mail will also continue to be available.

The original plan to open the General Reading Room and the Periodicals Reading Room also on Saturdays and to thus fulfil a special request by the users has to be postponed for the time being. The question whether or not and when the reading rooms can be opened on Saturdays also has to be considered in connection with the current deliberations of the capital city of Munich to possibly designate the Ludwigstrasse as a so-called party mile on the coming weekends.

Update 6 July 2021:
It is planned to open the General Reading Room from 8:00 to 15:00 and from 16:00 to 22:00, as well as the Periodicals Reading Room from 9:00 to 17:00 also on Saturdays as of 7 August 2021.

As strongly frequented as the reading rooms and highly popular up to the Corona pandemic, the learning and working area "Plaza" will be open and accessible again Monday through Friday from 10:00 to 19:00. The number of seats there is limited due to the pandemic, but there will be no obligatory advance booking.

The Stabi Café with catering inside and outside will open again as well as of 12 July with a limited number of seats. The opening hours are planned as follows: Monday through Friday from 8:00 to 19:00. Since the general control of admission to the library in the entrance hall will be discontinued, access to the Stabi Café is possible for everybody.

To ensure compliance with the hygiene and distancing rules, which continue to be applicable, the number of working places in the reading rooms unfortunately needs to remain limited for the time being. The obligation to wear a face mask throughout the building will remain in place as well. For the area of book collection and return and the registration office, a maximum permissible number of users remains applicable. As soon as a further loosening of the rules becomes possible in this regard, the library will implement this without delay.

Director General Klaus Ceynowa: "We are moving a step closer to the long-awaited return to normality also with regard to using our library! I am happy that the library can return to being the open house it used to be to a much greater extent now. This is shown by the further opening steps. Although the pandemic is not over yet, it can be rated as a positive aspect of the crisis that it has given the library a further digital innovation boost, for example in the form of the app permitting reserving working places in the reading rooms in a manner that is exact to the hour and number of working place."

Press release for download  (PDF, 101 KB)  (in German)

Contact persons

Dr. Berthold Gillitzer
User Services Department
Phone  +49 89 28638-2659
berthold.gillitzer@bsb-muenchen.de

Peter Schnitzlein
Press and Public Relations
Phone  +49 89 28638-2429
presse@bsb-muenchen.de