In contrast to most European countries, the existence of public libraries in Austria is not backed up by any library law. There is no legally obligated commitment to establish and maintain public libraries. There is no law providing standards for buildings, furnishing and equipment and staff. Public libraries in Austria are equipped accordingly. The establishment and maintenance of public libraries are voluntary achievements by their parent institutions.
36.6 % of public libraries are maintained by the communities, 22 % by the church, 7.8 % by organisations of employees. Furthermore, there is an ever increasing number of public libraries which possess a co-operative sustainer, meaning that communities and church and/or employee-organisations share the expenses for the libraries: in 2010 there were 451, which were 29.2 %. Only 4.3 % have other parent institutions, mostly registered associations.

According to type of sustainer-ship, there are significant differences in equipment and furnishing as well as usage:
An average community-library has book-collections (8,038 media) nearly double the size of a library maintained by an employee-organization (4,895) or the church (2,998), but also significantly more than libraries being run by cooperative bodies (5,195).
With these book-collections the public libraries maintained by the communities master the major part of borrowings: 14.291.872 borrowings were registered in those libraries exclusively financed by communities and towns, which are more than double the borrowings of all cooperative, clerical libraries and libraries run by employee-organisations or other institutions together.
The relation concerning visitors is similar: nearly two thirds of the 9.157.562 visitors of public libraries were registered in those libraries solely run by the communities.
These successful numbers correlate with the distribution of full-time staff: 78.4 % of the 869 full-time librarians are employed in community-libraries, 11.7 % in cooperatively-maintained libraries, 4.5 % in libraries of the Chamber of Labour (AK) and the Austrian Trade Union (ÖGB), as well as 1.1 % in institutions run by the church.

* Austrian Federation of Trade Unions (ÖGB) and Chamber of Labour (AK)