Networks and Central Libraries
KVK: The Karlsruher Virtuelle Katalog (Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog) allows for parallel searches in several catalogs at once, as well as in bookstore directories, for example. Currently, it can direct you to approximately 500 million books and journal titles worldwide.
HBZ: the Hochschulbibliothekszentrum (University Library Center) for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia gives you access to the state’s collaborative catalog. Here, you can also access DigiBib.
Portals
TIB-Portal:is the portal for specialist and research data for technical life science subjects. In the TIB Portal, you have access to more than 170 million data sets from specialist databases, publishers, and library catalogs. Researching is free of charge.
EconBiz (Virtual Specialist Library for Economic Sciences): EconBiz originated as a collaborative project between the ZBW, and the Cologne university and state libraries. EconBiz contains full texts, a specialist information guide that refers to websites that focus on economics-related topics and library catalogs belonging to the cooperation partners.
Resources for full texts
EZB: Access to more than 47,000 academic publications and e-journals, half of which are freely available in their entirety. It also contains online publications for which the Hochschule Kaiserslautern’s University Library is licensed, so they are available across the whole campus. You can search for publications alphabetically or by subject.
Springer-Link: allows for online viewing of around 2,000 Springer journals. Springer primarily deals with the topics of technology, medicine, and life sciences.
Wiley Online Library: offers research possibilities under various aspects including access to abstracts and full texts of open access journals. If licenses are purchased, additional full texts can be accessed.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): this is a directory of electronic journals which are free to access, based on the principle of open access online. Unlike with the EZB, you can search for individual articles here.
bookboon.com: The resources for students currently include over 1,000 textbooks. The collection is curated exclusively by professors with teaching duties at a recognized University
Databases
DBIS: A cooperative project to allow use of academic online and CD-ROM databases. There is free, campus-wide access to all of the subject-specific databases for which the University Library is licensed and around 4,500 databases available for free online.
Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt (DPMA): The Patent and Trade Mark Office is the central authority in the field of industrial property in Germany. The DMPA’s statutory mandate is to grant and administer industrial property rights and to inform the public of existing industrial property rights in Germany.
IEEE Xplore full text access to the approx. 6 million publications of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) since 1988: over 190 IEEE journals, more than 1,200 IEEE Congress Reports (approx. 10,000 individual fonts), more than 3,800 valid IEEE norms/standards
Nautos: Database with approx. 2,500,000 data of standards from 27 countries (e.g. ANSI, DIN, ISO), technical rules as well as German legal regulations with technical reference and valid EU directives.
Sciencedirect: Elsevier offers its journal archive in subject-specific collections. The national licence contains a total of around 1,500 titles.
VDE NormenBibliothek:Complete edition of the rules and regulations of the German Electrical Engineering Association (VDE). With the VDE Standards Library, you have direct access to all valid VDE regulations, including drafts in full text - in total approx. 3,500. Extensive bibliographic information is available for withdrawn and historical VDE regulations.
Search Engines
Google Scholar: on Google Scholar, you can search for academic texts.
BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine): is one of the world's largest search engines for online academic documents. The index spans over 100 million documents from over 4,000 sources. Some 60% of the documents included in the BASE directory are full texts available to access for free (open access). The BASE search engine is operated by the Bielefeld University Library.
Online Inter-Library Loans
Online-Fernleihe: the portal for online inter-library loans, officially known in German as “Deutscher Leihverkehr”, is a cooperative establishment by libraries in the Federal Republic of Germany for sharing and providing media. It is based on the principle of reciprocity, i.e. every library contributes to and makes use of the shared stocks.