The UB is a service institution that provides research, teaching and study at its university with scientific literature and information (hereinafter: information media). To this end, it builds up local information resources, provides access to information relevant to the university that is available worldwide, ensures rapid accessibility and delivery of required documents, and promotes competence in information use and electronic publishing through advice and training.

It consistently orients its range of services to the needs of its users and the strategic goals of the university and actively promotes its services to users.

• The UB procures, indexes and provides specialist information in electronic, audiovisual and printed form, which effectively supports research, teaching and studies at the university, but also regionally and supra-regionally.
• It builds up and maintains a stock of academic information media from all subject areas represented at the university, taking into account current and anticipated future needs.
• When selecting the information media - which is done by the subject librarians of the University Library - it takes into account the suggestions of the faculties and institutions, unless there are weighty reasons to the contrary. Subject librarians can work with the faculties and institutions or their representatives (library liaison officers) to draw up acquisition profiles for the individual subjects supervised by the university library.
• The procurement of all information media required in the field of the university is always carried out by the UB on the basis of the procurement guidelines applicable to the university and, if necessary, further specifications of the same.
• The electronic information media acquired and provided by the UB are generally made available (i.e. unless there are technical, copyright, licensing or financial reasons to the contrary) via servers of the university or external servers for the entire campus of Paderborn University.
• The UB archives all information media acquired by it that have a value for future academic work.
• It ensures long-term access to the information worth preserving by using appropriate preservation measures.
• It collects and archives the scientific publications of its own university, including electronic publications and "grey literature".
• It indexes its printed, audiovisual and electronic holdings according to formal and content-related criteria.
• It participates in national and international interlibrary loan and document delivery services and ensures rapid delivery of locally unavailable information, primarily using the information networks.
• It offers access to information available worldwide through subject portals and reference tools and actively provides information services tailored to special user interests.

• The UB provides the infrastructure for academic publishing, especially for the university's electronic publications, and supports electronic publishing at the university by supervising authors.
• It contributes to the international knowledge network and to the competitiveness and cultural representation of the university by indexing, digitising and propagating its stock of information media.

• The UB is available to all members and institutions of the University and - provided that this does not restrict the fulfilment of tasks for the University - to the public. The conditions of use as well as exclusions of liability are regulated in more detail in the UB's regulations for use.
• It makes its non-electronic holdings available during its extensive opening hours for use on its own premises and, in some cases, for home lending.
• It offers appropriate working facilities for individual and group work using the latest technical equipment (workstations).
• It offers advice and training on how to use the information and services effectively.
• The competence to methodically acquire and evaluate information is a key competence to be imparted to students by the university in order to enable them to study effectively and to enter the profession without problems. The teaching of this competence is a joint task of the university lecturers and the UB. The UB monitors the professional discussion on information literacy and develops content-related and methodological concepts and concrete training units together with partners from the library and information sector. It promotes information literacy, i.e. the ability to use information media and to deal with it critically, through counselling and, if necessary, also through subject-specific learning modules integrated into degree programmes.

• The UB uses and develops innovative technologies to fulfil its tasks.
• It ensures high quality services and cost efficiency through modern management methods.
• It promotes the competence of its staff through further training and strategic personnel development.
• It participates in the training of library staff.