The Contemporary Printed Books collection is divided into subcollections, which are distributed over the Book Tower’s seventeen floors.

• Subcollections II and III contain
  • monographs and miscellaneous works acquired between 1852 and 1934
  • out-of-print journals and magazines
  • Belgian series published before 1931
• Subcollection IV is reserved for Belgian monographs as well as the works from the Legal Deposit that date from 1966 to 1981
• Subcollections V and BB are reserved for books that enter the collection through the Legal Deposit.
• Subcollections VI, 7 and 9 contain international monographs and miscellaneous works later than 1934 and any second copies of Belgian publications later than 1966.
• Subcollection TH consists of dissertations. Before 1905, the dissertations were catalogued in Sections II or III.
• Subcollection B comprises of
  • journals, magazines and series published in Belgium before 1966
  • second copies of Belgian publications later than 1966
• Subcollection BD is a continuation of Section B at the Legal Deposit and contains international journals, magazines and series published since 1966.
• Subcollection R contains international journals, magazines and series published abroad after 1865.
• Collections of a particular size acquired by the Library by donations, as legacies or purchases are stored in their entirety and their location numbers are preceded by the letters FS (Fonds Spécial or Special Collection).

Examples of such collections are the FS VI on the Paris Commune that was donated by V. De Meulemeester, the FS XXIV, donated by Herman Liebaers, and the FS XXVII which contains the anarchist works collected by M. Dieu. A number of these collections were entrusted to the Royal Library’s specialist departments, such as the François-Joseph Fétis Collection, which is now stored partly in the Music Department and partly in the Rare Books Department. The collection also contains smaller series which we have not listed here.