Die Bibliothek sammelt Literatur in den Bereichen Mathematik, Physik, Materialwissenschaft, Chemie, Biologie und Kognitionswissenschaft. Der Bestand umfasst überwiegend Monografien, Proceedingsbände werden nur bei besonderer Bedeutung der Konferenz erworben.

The Library and Information Service (BIS) is the joint library for the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) and five institutes of the Center for Earth System Science and Sustainability. The cooperation with some university institutes regarding the library exists since the foundation of the MPI-M in 1975.

The MPI-CBG library provides comprehensive literature and informations services to all MPI-CBG members and guests.

The special library maintained by the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology contains approximately 15,000 books and series of volumes and 25,900 bound journals covering the fields of biochemistry, organic chemistry, molecular and cell biology, protein chemistry and structural biology.

The MPI-MP opened its reference library in 1995. The library houses over 2000 books and 120 prominent molecular biology-related journals.

Gemeinsamer Katalog des Max-Planck-Instituts für Biogeochemie und des Max-Planck-Instituts für Chemische Ökologie, Jena.

The library of the MPIs Martinsried is a specialized reference library primarily rendering services to research staff and visiting scientists. Its collection of books and ejournals is mainly used on behalf of the Institute's research projects.

The Campus Library is a shared service unit for following neighboring Max Planck institutes: Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen and the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory

Various dictionaries are available.

The research database "Scholarly Journals and Newspapers in the Age of Enlightenment", conducted by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, provides an extensive systematic index to German-language periodicals of the 18th century. It is based on the long-term research project "Scholarly Journals and Newspapers", which besides indexing and digitizing these scholarly journals aims to visualize their significant role for the emergence and structures of the "Enlightened scientific community". The project focuses on interdisciplinary journals, comprising of original contributions, book reviews, scholarly news as well as all facets of critique. The interactive online database also includes the data of the two previous research projects "Index of German-language Periodicals" (IdZ 18) and "Systematic Index of German-language Review Journals" (IdRZ 18). By the year 2025, it will give access to 323 periodicals (ca. 2,775 volumes and ca. 1,260,000 pages), spanning the time period 1688-1815.