The Alpha Bank Library

A rich collection of books

The Alpha Bank Library numbers more than 30,000 book titles, in Greek and other languages, as well as 600 titles of financial magazines. It is enhanced with book purchases and donations by the Alpha Bank personnel and third parties.

The Library collection includes:

• Financial books, law publications and magazines.
• Dictionaries and encyclopaedias in Greek and other languages.
• Archaeology, history, folklore and art books.
• Books by modern and contemporary Greek and foreign literature writers.

Rare invaluable publications

The Alpha Bank Library holds a unique collection of rare publications, dated from the 16th to the 19th century. They are the works of ancient Greek writers and European travellers, who toured the wider Greek territory. These books help compose the history of Modern Greece.

The oldest among these publications is the book Demosthenes’ Orations, Two and Sixty. The book was printed during the Renaissance at the famous printing company of Aldus Manutius in Venice.

The Library also holds a complete collection of history and geography maps of antiquity and the Middle Ages, printed at the Cartography Centre, University of Tübingen. The collection is unique in Greece.

Archives of corporate documents, photographs and newspapers

In addition to books, the Alpha Bank Library holds 2 important archives:

• The Archive of Field Studies of the companies ICAP and STOCHASIS, in electronic and paper format.
• The Archive of Financial Statements of Alpha Bank and its Group companies, and other banks.

Moreover, the Library holds 2 valuable photography archives:

• The Photography Archive of the Commercial Bank. It features 10,500 negatives and slides on various themes from Greek history and art.
• The Photography Archive of Neoclassical Architecture. It boasts approximately 3,800 negatives and photographs with general and partial city plans, public and private buildings, monuments, murals, sculptures and architectural details.

The Library also maintains a 1-year archive of Greek and foreign newspaper issues.

A home forever

The Library is housed at the Alpha Bank headquarters and is open daily. It is open to the general public for visits. However, it is a lending library only for the Alpha Bank Group personnel.

The Pericles Komninos Reading Room at 16 Pesmazoglou Street is available to all during working days and hours.

Managing the Alpha Bank publications

The Library manages the Alpha Bank publications, which number more than 181 books, and more than 46 exhibition catalogues and brochures for educational programmes and lectures.

In 2019 the Library created a Publications Archive which includes 20 copies of each Alpha Bank publication, except for the few that are out of print. These are books with financial, historical and artistic contents, or works related to the history of art and ancient numismatics. They cover various aspects of Greek history and Greek culture, from ancient times to this day.

Keeping records of the publications

The books held in the Alpha Bank Library have been purchased from bookstores, publication houses and institutes or have been donated. Each book is catalogued based on the OpenABEKT Library Automation and Data Management System of the National Documentation Centre.

Materials are recorded according to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules and classification is based on the Dewey Decimal Classification system.

Contributing to new publications

When a new publication is to be released by Alpha Bank, the Library:

• Undertakes to edit the contents and commission the book binding.
• Approves the covers and graphic design work.
• Sends a request to the Greek ISBN Centre of the National Library of Greece, to obtain a unique ISBN.

It is also responsible for the sale of the books and the Alpha Bank e-shop.

Hosting exhibitions

The Alpha Bank Library hosts temporary exhibitions with the aim of promoting part of its collection.

One of them is the exhibition “Rare Publications. The Alpha Bank Collection” which opened in 2018 at the exhibition space of the Bank headquarters. Visitors are able to admire the valuable books that are integrally linked to Greek history.

Contributing to education

In 2018, for the first time, the Library designed an educational programme, titled “Getting to Know the Library”. The programme is addressed to primary and high school students. It is carried out in a special area of the Alpha Bank Library.

Moreover, with the aim of promoting Greek culture, each year the Library collects and donates a significant number of books published by Alpha Bank and third parties to institutes, municipal libraries and schools.

The Alpha Bank Library was initially called the “Library of the Financial Studies and Legal Services Divisions” and held a considerable number of books on Economics and Law.

In 1984 it was significantly enhanced with the donation of 3,000 volumes from the personal library of Pericles Komninos, a senior executive of Credit Bank.

Over the decades that followed, the mergers with Ionian Bank in 2000 and Commercial Bank in 2013 helped to further enrich the Alpha Bank Library.