Nobel Library is an instrument of the Swedish Academy's prize work. It was founded in 1901 in connection with the Academy's newly established Nobel Institute. Its primary function was to provide the Nobel Committee and the Institute's employees all NECESSARY literature in the work of the literary Nobel Prize. The library's task is ultimately originates in the will of Alfred Nobel, in which "the Academy in Stockholm" is required to reward "those in the literature has produced the most outstanding work in an ideal direction".

The Nobel Institute would thus entail a larger library of accounts by the serial works of world literature. The mission of planning went into the library literature professor Karl Warburg.

In November 1900 informed Warburg Academy that he had found one for library purposes appropriate at Railway Square, located in the by Ferdinand Boberg plotted so-called Vasaborgen. It had a "free, cheerful location: spacious rooms, rich natural light for both the reading room as book talks, fully solid building, mighty to bear which weights at any time". The premises were calculated to accommodate about 65 000 volumes, being an "excellent reading room" sense of onto a terrace with plantings, a few office and a caretaker residence.

Warburg counted on having to purchase literature from around thirty languages. He had therefore contacted most of the major publishers and booksellers across Europe. Many books were bought in Paris, Avignon, Barcelona, ​​London, Rome, Poznan, Zagreb, Belgrade, Prague, Budapest, Copenhagen ....

I would significantly Nobel Library for their coverage can also be a journal library containing "such a rich collection as possible of critical, literary and linguistic journals of relevance".

Nobel Library was opened November 16, 1901. In addition to serving members of the Academy and Nobelintitutets officials would also, if resources, "provide other scientists and scholars and writers the opportunity to study foreign literature". Gradually, was also an "educated public" access.

Five years after the library's creation was mere fiction book collection has grown to almost 15 000 volumes, and after two decades had been the library had outgrown the premises at the Railway Square. In October 1921 Nobel Library was able to move into its current premises in the Stock Exchange building in Old Town.