German National Library of Medicine (), 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 evalua ...

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 and water to support its life. The intake of these substances provides organisms with nutrients (divided into macro- and micro-) which can be metabolized t ...

environmental Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

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. Professiona ...

. As a result, today ZB MED is the world's largest specialist library in its five subjects 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 ( ; ; ; ) is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly Middle Rhine, its middle section. It is the main industrial heartland of Germany because of its many factories, and it has historic ties to the Holy ...

, one founded in 1847 in

Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...

and another in 1908 in

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

Bonn

In 1847 the Royal Agricultural Academy () was founded in Bonn- Poppelsdorf and it became a full degree-granting university in 1919. In 1934 the Agricultural University was incorporated into the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

and the library became a department of the main university library. By 1950 it was the largest agricultural library in

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

. In 1962 the library was renamed the National Library of Agricultural Science () and given nationwide responsibility for agriculture by the

German Research Foundation The German Research Foundation ( ; 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 Germany. In 2019, the DFG had a funding bud ...

DFG. It became the German center for the Agricultural Libraries Network (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.

Cologne

The Academy of Practical Medicine () established a hospital library in 1908 and it became a department of the university and City Library of Cologne () in 1920. The library survived

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

intact and in 1949 the

(DFG) granted it nationwide responsibility for collecting medical literature in

. 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. 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 () is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in 1388. It closed in 1798 before being re-established in 1919. It is now one of the largest universities in Germany with around 45,187 students. The Universit ...

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. , it holds: * virtual stock: 71,518,985 * shelf meters: * magazines: 30,000 titles * e-books: 15,000 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. 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. Publications include peer-reviewed journals and abstracts from scientific congresses of medical specialty societies. The portal also includes access to the Living Handbooks publishing platform, where contributors can add and update content on a given topic. As of 2024, there are currently five books
Handbook of Perishable Food Supply Chains''''Living Textbook of Hand Surgery''in cattle physiology and behaviour research''Lehrbuch der Medizinischen Psychologie und Medizinischen Soziologie''
an
Infections and Inflammations''
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 the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

: 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

annotation 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 Marginalia, in the margin of book page ...

s from standardised vocabularies through a process based on

text mining Text mining, text data mining (TDM) or 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 extracting information from differe ...

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 an openly accessible, free database which includes 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 Institute ...

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. I ...

(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 The Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany (AWMF; ''Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Wissenschaftlichen Medizinischen Fachgesellschaften''), established in 1962 and located in Frankfurt am Main, is the umbrella organisation of more than ...

(AWMF) *

DataCite DataCite is an international not-for-profit organization which aims to improve ''data citation'' in order to: *establish easier access to research data on the Internet *increase acceptance of research data as legitimate, citable contributions to ...

e.V. *

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; . (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition and food security. Its Latin motto, , translates t ...

(FAO) * German Institute of Medical Documentation and Information (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. Funding and Structure As of 2020, 96 non-u ...

Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

* TH Köln – Technology, Arts, Sciences *

US Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and producti ...

(USDA) *

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Gen ...

(WHO)

References

External links

*
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