The University Library is a service institution that supports research, teaching, and student studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE). It assists the UDE in fulfilling its responsibilities regarding information provision and makes literature, information, and data—in both electronic and print formats—as well as related services available to its members and the university community. To this end, the University Library builds up local collections, provides access to globally available content relevant to the UDE, ensures rapid access to and delivery of required documents, and develops modern services tailored to the needs of its target groups. In doing so, it contributes to the open-access transformation of scholarly publishing, helps ensure sound scholarly publishing practices, and supports the implementation of the FAIR data principles in the field of research data management. It provides its services digitally and on-site in specialized libraries. It offers workspaces and learning areas designed for a variety of work styles and supports communication and exchange within the UDE as well as with civil society and external partners. Together with the University Archives (UA), it contributes to the preservation of the university’s cultural heritage.

• Acquiring, cataloguing and presenting  of scientific print media and audio-visual documents.
• Lending media and providing desks to do academic work.
• Delivering media that is not available in the library by interlibrary loan or document delivery service.
• Providing the infrastructure for scientific publishing.
• Offering advice and means of qualification.

The library has turned into a "hybrid" library with a range of both print media and electronic media. Given the rising need for carrels and reading rooms within the library, the way of developing and archiving the library’s collection has been thought over, so that literature being in great demand can be presented more efficiently and that the number of reading desks has been increased.

Due to the university’s several sites the library provides a range of services (for example, the electronic availability of important reference stock or the campus delivery service).

The library supports an integrated research process, starting with the search for information up to the acquisition and administration of media. This includes, among other things, the active promotion of open access publishing and its different versions, and the support of the university’s bibliography, in which the extent of research is presented.

Another major task of the library is to qualify lecturers and students in terms of information literacy.

The library supports the continuing education of its staff to meet the growing and constantly changing demands in their areas of work.

The basis for the media selection is a profile that is geared to the assigments of teaching and studying and to the university’s research priorities.

The library has a collection of approximately 1.8 million volumes, subscribes to around 670 print journals and offers access to some 46.000 electronic journals. In addition, the library provides a comprehensive range of databases and an ever-growing collection of e-books (currently around 770.000).