About our Collections

With its Library and Special Collections, the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (IAI) is home to the largest European knowledge archive on Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal and their transregional entanglements. The focus is on analog and digital media and information on these regions in all languages and from all countries. In addition to the books, journals and databases in the library, films, photographs, graphics, sound recordings, maps and legacies are collected and made accessible in the Special Collections. In the IAI's Digital Collections, all digitized holdings from the Library and Special Collections are made available worldwide and in open access.

The combination of the holdings of the Library and the Special Collections of the IAI enables innovative links between text, sound and image sources. These unique, diverse and interlinked materials are the starting point for national and international research and publication projects as well as for events and exhibitions in Germany and abroad. The IAI thus makes a special contribution to the preservation, research and dissemination of the cultural heritage of Latin America, the Caribbean and the Iberian Peninsula.