The library owes its appearance to the founder and first director of the institute, academician Danylo Kyrylovych Zabolotny. Returning to Ukraine in 1928 and being elected President of the Academy of Sciences, D.K. Zabolotny fulfilled his long-standing dream: he created the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology in Kyiv as part of the Academy of Sciences, including a scientific library in its structure. Already in the first months of the institute's existence, funds were allocated for equipping the library and purchasing literature abroad. After the death of D.K. Zabolotny, the Kyiv part of his personal library became the basis of the scientific library of the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of the Academy of Sciences, which was headed by V.N. Shults, created in 1930.
In the late 1950s, the literature from the personal collection of D.K. Zabolotny was systematized and transferred to a separate fund, a special card file was created with headings reflecting the breadth of interests of its owner.
Since its founding, the library has been located in a large, beautiful hall on Velyka Zhytomyrska Street. In 1964, the library together with the institute moved to a new building on Akademika Zabolotny Street, where it is still located.
Two spacious reading rooms with 36 seats and a computer connected to the Internet, a literature issuing room and two large book stores are at the service for readers.
The main task of the library is to provide qualified library and bibliographic services to the employees of the institute, scientists and postgraduate students, informing about new arrivals, thematic selections of literature, bibliographic references, information support on scientific topics. The library fund includes 121,465 copies in Ukrainian, Russian, as well as English, German, French, Polish, Czech and other foreign languages. There are 25,478 copies of books, including 2,692 foreign ones. Periodicals – 89,408 copies, 34,214 – foreign. There are 6,579 copies of normative production-practical editions of literature. The exchange fund of the library consists of 2826 items.
The library has a fund of dissertations and dissertation abstracts. The main topics of the fund are general, industrial, agricultural, soil, medical microbiology, virology, biotechnology, as well as literature on general biology, genetics, agriculture, medicine.
The reference and bibliographic apparatus consists of catalogs (alphabetical and systematic) of the main fund, dissertations, abstracts, publications from the personal library of D.K. Zabolotny and a card index.
Among the library's unique publications are the weekly newspaper "Vrach" (1891-1900), "Russian Doctor" (1902-1917), "Botkin's Hospital Newspaper" (1900-1903), "Archive of Biological Sciences" (1906-1939), "Annales de l` Institut Pasteur "(1892 - 1969)," Journal of bacteriology "(since 1916). The library stores a complete set of the "Microbiological Journal", which has been published by the institute since 1934.
The library staff consists of three employees. Library funds are actively used not only by employees of the institute, but also by students of higher educational institutions of biological profile, as well as members of the biological section of the Small Academy of Sciences. The library provides document copying services, directs literature on MBA, systematically organizes large book and illustration thematic exhibitions and exhibitions for jubilee and commemorative dates in the life of the institute and Ukraine.