Nereus

German National Library of Economics (ZBW)

The - ZBW German National Library of Economics - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics is the world’s largest specialist library for economics, located in Kiel and Hamburg. with more than four million publications in printed or electronic format and subscriptions to 31,970 periodicals and journals.

Brief history

The ZBW was established 1919 as a department of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, The amount of material collected grew very fast, and in the 1930s it already belonged to one of the world's most comprehensive collections in economics. In 1966 the library received the status and label "German National Library of Economics", since 1980 it has been a member of the Leibniz Association. Since 2007, the ZBW also includes the former library of the Hamburg Institute of International Economics and was incorporated as a foundation under public law independent of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. financed by the Leibniz Association. The ZBW is among the leading Information Centres for developing and applying the latest semantic technologies and Web 2.0 technologies for highly innovative information services. These leading-edge technologies are developed in collaboration with internationally renowned research institutes in information technology from all over the world.

Collections

With a collection of 4.2 million volumes and subscriptions to 31,970 periodicals and journals, the ZBW is the largest specialist library dedicated to the field of economics in the world. The library collects material from all over the world in all of the major languages. Focal points of the collections are working papers, statistics and dissertations. The ZBW also maintains extensive collections from international organisations such as the OECD, the UN (incl. CEAP, FAO, ILO, UNCTAD, WHO), the WTO, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and hosts a European Documentation Centre.
Accumulation date range: 1914-
Contents date range: 1814-
An overview of the ZBW's collections can be found here.

Institutional Repositories

The ZBW runs EconStor, a subject based publication server for archiving economics online material. The repository contains over 35.000 documents, mainly working papers from German universities and research institutes. In all cases the library has signed deposit agreements with these institutions.

Digital Library Projects

The ZBW is involved in several digital library projects. The subject portal EconBiz comprises services such as a simultaneous search of several databases, an online tutorial and a virtual reference desk. Together with the Kiel Institute, the ZBW hosts the Open Access Journal Economics, which includes a two-stage peer-review process. The journal is also listed in the Social Sciences Citation Index.

.