With more than 700.000 items, the BBF is today Europe's second largest library specialised in education. Like the Herzog-August-Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, it belongs to the association of German cultural research libraries fulfilling a national role.

The Library of the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History is one of the world’s leading legal history libraries which owns up to 440,000 printed items and a multitude of electronic resources.