It's a treasure 46km long, in places 300 years old and it must be maintained at a temperature of exactly 20 degrees Celsius and between 40 and 60 percent humidity.
Exactly 104 employees are occupied in preserving this treasure, one which is growing by a kilometer every year.
Books -- lots of them -- are what this treasure is all about. It is the German Central Library for the Economic Sciences in the northern city of Kiel and is one of the largest book collections in the world.
More than 2.5 million books are stored in the new building of the Kiel Institute of World Economics of Kiel University. Each year, 40,000 new volumes are added to the collection, and lined up on the shelves they measure nearly 1km.
Besides the books, the library also has countless CD-ROMs and microfilms, in addition to what the Kiel institute is most proud of -- its collection of publications. Among the magazines are 100,000 "dead titles" -- publications up to 200 years old and no longer in print or circulation.
Then there are the 16,000 publications currently being published and assiduously collected. Be it a business newspaper from Kazakhstan or Cambodia, or financial publications from Cameroon or Canada, they can be found here.
From Syria alone there are 11 business publications. And even the central African state of Swaziland, where King Mswati III rules, is represented with three magazines.
The library has 2.4 million marks (US$1.11 million) at its disposal to spend each year for new books and publications.
Then there are donations, such as when the widow of some economics professor is glad to find a place for her late husband's private library, according to librarian Monika Zarnitz.
A similar collection to that in Kiel can be found only at the London School of Economics or the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
In Kiel, the clients include students and teachers, as well as multinational corporations.
"When Volkswagen wants to invest somewhere, then they often will read here about the stability, culture and investment climate in the country," says Horst Thomsen, the Kiel library director. He says the biggest customer is none other than the WTO.
Clients of this size must dig more deeply into their pockets for the library's services than the simple student, who may borrow books free of charge.
Books from the Kiel library are sent to borrowers throughout Europe, at a cost of around 15 marks per volume.
But it is more costly when a borrower needs some consulting advice about the books. "If somebody has no idea whatever, then we will draw up a list of the literature," Zarnitz said. What is the dream of many a helpless university student costs all of 30 marks.
But Thomsen is not satisfied with supplying only this kind of help.
"We are not some dusty library, but rather a modern services enterprise," he says.
People want more and more material and have less and less time, so that suddenly a market, and even competition, has evolved. Thomsen is now thinking of establishing a call center to provide over the telephone the information contained in the Kiel library's books.
In addition, he sees the library becoming a "navigator through the Internet" for corporate customers.
But despite CD-ROMs and the Internet -- "the network has its limits," Thomsen says -- it will still be books which are the supreme source of knowledge for people.
Information on the printed page has always been the property of the economy, long before there was even the science of economics.
This discipline is widely held to have begun some 225 years ago when the Scottish political philosopher Adam Smith wrote the classic Wealth of Nations.
Among the treasures in Kiel -- stored not too hot, and not too cold -- is a copy from the first edition of the Smith masterpiece which was published in 1776.
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