The University of Groningen Library owns around 3.5 million printed books, all findable through the SmartCat search engine. SmartCat contains the description, availability and location of books, journals and other items from a particular collection and can be used to request publications from the University Library.

Only a limited number of the physical books are on the open shelves and can be found in the different UB locations: UB City Centre, UB Zernike and the Central Medical Library.