About the library

The SIPRI Library holdings today consist of around 52 000 volumes. Apart from books and monographs the Library can offer an extensive collection of 'grey material', such as reports, series and conference proceedings as well as a special international collection of official publications. Once a month an electronic acquisition list is compiled and published on the Library web site.

Some of the material in the holdings is unique and cannot be found in any other library in Sweden. A contributory reason for this is the active exchange agreements the Library has with some 400 institutes and organizations worldwide.

The Library catalogue, SIPCAT, containing entries from 1988, is available online. Material from 2003 can also be viewed in the Swedish national catalogue, LIBRIS. Older material not yet in the online catalogue can be located in the card catalogue in the Library.

The Library holds some 150 current journals and newspapers and an additional 400 archived journals no longer subscribed to. SIPCAT has been expanded to include details of individual journal and newspaper articles relevant to SIPRI’s field of research from 1990. Daily newspapers are kept for up to one year.

The Library also maintains a database of events in security and arms control. A selection of the events covered in this database is published as a chronology in the SIPRI Yearbook.