A large part of the collection is based on objects that were designed or manufactured in Austria or the former crown lands. The transnational character of these historical holdings is outstanding among European technology museums.

Today, the focus of the collection is on technical innovations and technical culture from the user's perspective – in other words, on those applications that characterise the lives of people in Austria today. The aim is to equip visitors with a wide range of knowledge (e.g. through exhibitions) and to enable them to recognise technical challenges in the broadest sense, to actively contribute to their solution or to develop alternative, non-linear ideas for progress.

Current social issues such as climate change, the energy transition, digitalisation, security and diversity require a fundamental understanding of technical and socio-political processes in order to be able to contribute to future models in a critical and visionary way.

The TMW collection is currently divided into five central areas:

‘Everyday Life & Society’: in addition to the older collection groups of construction technology and fire protection, this area primarily comprises objects from the 20th and early 21st centuries. This collection area currently focuses on the use of technical objects in everyday life – on the body, in the home, in the city and in the environment. This expansion of the collection reflects the reorientation of the understanding of technology and museums in recent decades. The collection on the history of museums and institutions forms a special group.

‘Information & Communication’: This area brings together around 35,000 objects from the groups of musical instruments, radio and television, audio and video, typesetting and printing, photography and film, telecommunications, post, office and data processing. Many of the objects originate from the consumer goods industry, which has been expanding rapidly since the 19th century. The challenge today lies in collecting and documenting an almost unmanageable wealth of objects, particularly from the digital sector.

‘Natural Sciences & Energy’: When the museum was founded, topics such as mining, metallurgy, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering were already central focal points of the collection. Large objects from the second half of the 19th century – including steam engines, hammers, presses, turbines and generators – still characterise the historical profile today. Contemporary themes such as renewable energies and environmental protection complement this area. The ‘Natural Sciences’ collection contains numerous objects relating to physics, medical technology and measurement technology – including equipment from the Electropathological Museum and the AUVA Noise Museum.

‘Production Technology & Materials’: This section includes tools, machines and numerous industrially and handcrafted products – offering insights not only into production and labour history, but also into consumer history. With around half of all objects and several special historical collections (e.g. factory product cabinet, merchandise collection), this is one of the collection areas that characterises the profile of the museum. The current focus is on expanding the collection to include new materials such as concrete substitutes.

‘Transport & Mobility’: Traditionally, this collection area was divided into road, rail, ship, air and space travel. It has since been expanded to include new groups, such as infrastructure, mobility cultures, traffic flows, control systems and the question of inclusion and exclusion through technology. Mobility is understood as a cross-modal phenomenon. Today, the collection focuses on documenting current mobility trends – from global hubs and telematics to alternative and sustainable forms of mobility.

The digitised holdings of the TMW currently comprise around 158,000 objects, 35,500 archive units and around 171,000 data records on the history of motorsport in Austria. The online collection invites you to browse and discover – it shows the current status of object cataloguing in real time. The TMW was the first Austrian federal museum to make its entire collection of artefacts accessible online. The aim is to provide low-threshold access to knowledge, transparency in institutional knowledge management and the promotion of non-institutional research.

Curated content such as the Digital Galleries on topics generated from the TMW's holdings or staged content from the web exhibitions round off the TMW's digital offering to its visitors.

As a scientific institution, the Vienna Museum of Science and Technology is committed to making the knowledge it has accumulated and generated as widely accessible as possible. The museum therefore pursues an open data strategy within the framework of applicable data protection regulations: object data is made searchable and usable via a publicly accessible API – a contribution to the open knowledge society and the recognition of digital data as a scientific resource.