The collection of the Art History Library is searcheable via two kinds of catalogs: card-catalogs and online catalogs. The largest card-catalog is the alphabetical author-catalog (AK) which contains the majority of the Art History Department library's holdings. This is complemented by the Exhibition catalog, which lists all exhibition catalogs available at the Department in alphabetical order according to exhibition locations. The Disseratations catalog lists all Magister theses plus doctoral and post-doctoral (Habilitation) dissertations alphabetically according to the location of the universities they were completed in. A further catalog lists articles from journals and anthologies held in the library alphabetically by author. The catalog of Persons lists, also alphabetically, single articles from journals and anthologies on artists and other historical personalities. Analog to this a catalog of places has been assembled, listing landscapes of art and architecture alphabetically. A keyword catalog contains references to art historical concepts (for example: book illumination). Most card-catalogs have not been updated since 2002, as their function has been replaced by online catalogs. These are particularly useful in searching for publications which appeared from 1990 onwards; from year of publication 2001 onwards titles can only be searched online. In the electronic catalogs, searcheable via the Art History Department intranet or via internet, you can search with every kind of keyword (author, title etc). Three of the most frequently used catalogs are:

1. the FU-OPAC [accessible via internet without FU user-login] – accessible via the library's homepage

2. BHA (Bibliography of the History of Art [only accessible via the FU-intranet] – accessible in the register of online catalogs

3. AKL (Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon, General lexicon of artists) [accessible only in the FU-intranet] accessible in the register of online catalogs