German National Library of Medicine (german: Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Medizin), abbreviated ZB MED - Information Centre for Life Sciences in Cologne, together with the Bonn site, is the central specialist library for medicine, public health, nutrition, environmental and agricultural sciences in Germany. The focus is on collection development, full text supply and projects in the field of information sciences. ZB MED provides science, research, students and other interested parties with specialist literature and information. It is financed by the Federal Government and Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The
medical library
A health or medical library is designed to assist physicians, health professionals, students, patients, consumers, medical researchers, and information specialists in finding health and scientific information to improve, update, assess, or evalu ...
was initially formed 1973 through the mergers of several much older institutions. Between 2001 and 2003 it was further expanded to include
nutritional
Nutrition is the biochemical and physiological process by which an organism uses food to support its life. It provides organisms with nutrients, which can be metabolized to create energy and chemical structures. Failure to obtain sufficien ...
,
environmental
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
and
agricultural sciences
Agricultural science (or agriscience for short) is a broad multidisciplinary field of biology that encompasses the parts of exact, natural, economic and social sciences that are used in the practice and understanding of agriculture. Profession ...
. As a result, today ZB MED is the world's largest specialist library in its five subjects
[DataCite]
retrieved 23-May-2012 and the largest medical library in Europe.
On 1 January 2014, the ZB MED was converted into a foundation and given the name ZB MED - Leibniz Information Centre for Life Sciences.
Through a comprehensive transformation process, ZB MED has developed into an information and research centre for the life sciences. ZB MED is strongly committed to Open Science and is involved in four NFDI projects, e.g.
NFDI4Health and
NFDI4Microbiota.
History
The roots of the ZB MED can be traced to two predecessor institutions important to the heritage of the
Rhineland
The Rhineland (german: Rheinland; french: Rhénanie; nl, Rijnland; ksh, Rhingland; Latinised name: ''Rhenania'') is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section.
Term
Historically, the Rhinelands ...
, one founded in 1847 in
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...
and another in 1908 in
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...
.
[
]
Cologne
The Academy of Practical Medicine (german: Akademie für praktische Medizin) established a hospital library in 1908 and it became a department of the University and City Library of Cologne (german: Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln) in 1920. The library survived World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
intact and in 1949 the German Research Foundation
The German Research Foundation (german: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germ ...
(DFG) granted it nationwide responsibility for collecting medical literature in West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
. It also began collecting English language publications through financial support from the DFG. By 1963 the library held 250,000 books and subscribed to 1,100 journal titles.[History of the ZB MED]
retrieved 23-May-2012
In 1964, the German Science Council recommended that an independent National Library of Medicine be formed out of the University and City Library's medical department. Formally established in 1973, it was given a mandate to acquire relevant material in all medical subjects and languages. In 1994 the library's name was changed to the “Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Medizin” and in 1999 moved to a new building on the campus of the Hospital of the University of Cologne
The University of Cologne (german: Universität zu Köln) is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in the year 1388 and is one of the most prestigious and research intensive universities in Germany. It was the sixth university to ...
.[
]
Bonn
In 1847 the Royal Agricultural Academy (german: Königlich Landwirthschaftliche Akademie) was founded in Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...
-Poppelsdorf and it became a full degree-granting university in 1919. In 1934 the Agricultural University was incorporated into the University of Bonn
The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...
and the library became a department of the main university library. By 1950 it was the largest agricultural library in West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
.[ In 1962 the library was renamed the National Library of Agricultural Science (german: Zentralbibliothek der Landbauwissenschaft) and given nationwide responsibility for agriculture by the ]German Research Foundation
The German Research Foundation (german: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germ ...
DFG. It became the German center for the Agricultural Libraries Network
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
(AGLINET) in 1971 and moved into a new building in 1983. In 1987 the building was subject to an arson attack requiring extensive remodeling, although none of its 300,000 items were lost.[
]
One institution
In 1999 the German Science Council recommended Bonn University's agricultural library be merged with the ZB MED. The subject areas of nutrition and the environment were incorporated in 2001 followed by agriculture in 2003. Since then ZB MED operates as ''ZB MED Medicine. Health.'' at the site in Cologne and ''ZB MED Nutrition. Environment. Agriculture.'' at the site in Bonn.[
]
Collection
The book collection primarily consists of German and English-language volumes, while journals are acquired in all languages and from all countries. The library is a particular specialist in the acquisition of "gray literature", difficult to obtain and not available via the standard book or journal trade. As of 2021, it holds:
* virtual stock: 71.518.985
The library's physical collection spans over 38 km of bookshelves.[
Users are primarily students, doctors, scientists, although the library is open to general public. There is no charge for using the library buildings or borrowing books. The library also provides access to its collections via its own online portals for searching, full-text reading and ordering hard copies. Access to full text journal articles is also available through the Electronic Journals Library (EZB) Since December 2010 all the catalog data of ZB MED is freely licensed under ]CC0
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...
. Remote access is provided vi
LIVIVO
Open access publishing
PUBLISSO
is the Open Access publishing portal for the life sciences.
It is aimed at all researchers in the life sciences who want to publish their work and research data in an open-access manner - and at all those working in information science. The PUBLISSO team offers advice and workshops on all topics related to "Open Science" and provides support for long-term archiving.
DOI service: ZB MED acts as a DOI issuing office for non-profit online offerings in the fields of medicine, health, nutrition, environmental and agricultural sciences. DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) ensure the permanent citability of electronic publications and research data. ZB MED issues DOIs as a member of the DataCite consortium and in cooperation with TIB Hannover, which acts as the DOI registration agency and provides the technical infrastructure. DOI allocation is free of charge for academic institutions.
Search portal
LIVIVO
Internet-based search portal for the life sciences (medicine, health, nutrition, environmental and agricultural sciences). Provides access to over 59 million records from over 45 subject data sources and went online in April 2015. Access to licensed databases, e-journals and e-books is possible directly from LIVIVO for users registered at the Cologne site, also as remote access.
Covid-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
: In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, ZB MED has developed several services for scientists. For example, a centra
Covid-19 Hub
was developed. The hub lists various external and internal tools, data sets and literature. A Covid-19-specific version of the search portal LIVIVO was also set up. In addition, ZB MED has significantly simplified access to preprints with the service preVIEW. In the preprint viewer preVIEW, the preprints from arXiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, medRxiv and Preprints.org are combined and enriched with annotations
An annotation is extra information associated with a particular point in a document or other piece of information. It can be a note that includes a comment or explanation. Annotations are sometimes presented in the margin of book pages. For anno ...
from standardised vocabularies through a process based on text mining
Text mining, also referred to as ''text data mining'', similar to text analytics, is the process of deriving high-quality information from text. It involves "the discovery by computer of new, previously unknown information, by automatically extract ...
.
Partnerships
ZB MED partners with a variety of national and international libraries, institutions and associations.
International partnerships
It is also the official European supplier for full-text articles through the PubMed
PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintain the ...
bibliographic database operated by the U.S. National Library of Medicine
The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library.
Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Its ...
(NLM) – the world's largest medical library.[German National Library of Medicine Partnerships]
(in English) retrieved 23-May-2012 It is also partnered with the Agricultural Information Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (AII/CAAS), including a reciprocal agreement on mutual assistance in case of catastrophic events.[AII/CAAS and ZBMED Fields of Co-Operation]
retrieved 23-May-2012.
Other affiliations
ZB MED has over 30 additional cooperative arrangements, including:
* Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany
Association may refer to:
*Club (organization), an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal
* Trade association, an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry
* Voluntary associat ...
(AWMF)
* DataCite e.V.
* Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...
(FAO)
* German Institute of Medical Documentation and Information
The German Institute for Medical Documentation and Information (german: Deutsches Institut für Medizinische Dokumentation und Information), abbreviated DIMDI, was a German organization responsible for medical information classification and managem ...
(DIMDI)
* Leibniz Association
The Leibniz Association (German: ''Leibniz-Gemeinschaft'' or ''Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz'') is a union of German non-university research institutes from various disciplines.
As of 2020, 96 non-university research insti ...
[Interdisciplinary Network of Infrastructure Facilities (IVI) at the Leibniz Association]
retrieved 25-may-2012.
* Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...
* TH Köln - Technology, Arts, Sciences
* University of Cologne
The University of Cologne (german: Universität zu Köln) is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in the year 1388 and is one of the most prestigious and research intensive universities in Germany. It was the sixth university to ...
* US Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of comme ...
(USDA)
* World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of h ...
(WHO) WHO Documentation Centers
retrieved 23-May-2012
See also
* German National Library of Economics
The National Library of Economics (ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics) is the world's largest research infrastructure for economic literature, online as well as offline. The ZBW is a member of the Leibniz Association and has been ...
* German National Library of Science and Technology
The German National Library of Science and Technology (german: Technische Informationsbibliothek), abbreviated TIB, is the national library of the Federal Republic of Germany for all fields of engineering, technology, and the natural sciences. I ...
* List of libraries in Germany
This is a list of libraries in the Federal Republic of Germany. There is a much more extensive list available on the German Wikipedia. There are about 6,313 public libraries in Germany.
National Libraries
* German National Library (''Deutsch ...
References
External links
German National Library of Medicine – Homepage
Search portal MEDPILOT
German Medical Science (GMS) portal
{{Authority control
1973 establishments in West Germany
Libraries in Bonn
Buildings and structures in Cologne
Medical and health organisations based in North Rhine-Westphalia
Libraries in Germany
Libraries established in 1973
Medical libraries
National libraries
Deposit libraries
Organisations based in Cologne