German National Library of Economics

Updated on Dec 04, 2023

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Country Germany Phone +49 431 8814555 Founded 1919		Established 1919 Budget 22.56 million EUR

Type National library, Research library Scope Economics, Finance, Business Location Düsternbrooker Weg 120, 24105 Kiel Neuer Jungfernstieg 21, 20354 Hamburg Items collected books, journals, electronic media Address Düsternbrooker Weg 120, 24105 Kiel, Germany Hours Closed today SundayClosedMonday9AM–7PMTuesday9AM–7PMWednesday9AM–7PMThursday9AM–7PMFriday9AM–7PMSaturdayClosed Similar University of Kiel, Christian zu Kiel: Universit, CAU Fachbibli für Wirtsc, Stadtbüc Kiel, Bibliothek der Muthesiu Profiles Twitter Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Google+

The German National Library of Economics (German: Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften), abbreviated ZBW, is the world's largest library for economics. It also bears the suffix "Leibniz Information Centre for Economics" and is part of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Scientific Community (WGL). The headquarters of the ZBW is in Kiel, Germany with additional offices in Hamburg.

The ZBW is jointly funded by the German Federal Government and States of Germany. Its mission is to procure, index, archive and provide literature on economics and business fields to researchers and the general public. It is a depositary library of the World Trade Organization and maintains a European Union Documentation Centre at both locations. It also collects all official publications of the United Nations, OECD, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The ZBW is headed by Klaus Tochtermann.

History

The ZBW has its roots in a library established in 1919 at the "Royal Institute for Maritime Traffic and World Economy" (German: Königliches Institut für Seeverkehr und Weltwirtschaft), which later became the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. The institute’s founder, Bernhard Harms, intended for the library to contribute to research in economic geography, trade politics, colonial economics and transport policy. By 1924, the collection had already reached 70,000 volumes.

After the Nazi Seizure of Power in 1933, "Jewish" and social democratic workers were expelled from the Institute under the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service." The National Socialist regime did permit the library to keep its collections and even continue the procurement of foreign literature. Unlike many libraries during World War II, it did not suffer any losses thanks to the books being moved to safety into the Cathedral of Ratzeburg. As a result, in postwar-torn Germany it had a uniquely comprehensive and valuable collection. In 1966 the German Research Foundation (DFG) designated the ZBW as the central library for economics in the Federal Republic of Germany. Since 1980 it has been a member of the Leibniz Association.

In 2007 the library of the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA) merged with the ZBW, creating the largest economics library and information provider in the world. At the same time, the ZBW was incorporated as a foundation under public law independent of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Since then, the ZBW is additionally known as the "Leibniz Information Centre for Economics".

Collection

The ZBW acquires theoretical and empirical literature in economics, business and related disciplines such as economics education and psychology. All economics-related literature published in Germany is purchased, as well as most of the literature from the United States and the United Kingdom. Publications from other countries are purchased selectively. One emphasis of the ZBW is to acquire all publications of the world’s leading business schools and economic research institutes. In 2016 the collection consisted of:

Books and other publications: 4.43 million

Current journal subscriptions: 27,119 titles

Increase in books per year: 42,879

Increase in working papers per year: 24,600

The library's physical collection occupies more than 80 kilometers of shelf space and nearly 43,000 volumes (print and digital) are added each year. Anyone may visit the library site, read journals and borrow books free of charge. Users can also access databases and electronic journals which are not freely available on the internet. Document delivery services are available to deliver books and articles directly to users' workplaces, homes, or local libraries.

EconBiz

EconBiz is a search portal for economics. It aims to support research in and teaching of economics with a central entry point for all kinds of subject-specific information and direct access to full texts.

EconStor

EconStor is a publication server for scholarly economic literature, provided as a non-commercial public service by the ZBW. The full texts collected here (mostly working papers, but also journal articles, conference proceedings, etc.) are all freely accessible according to the principles of Open Access. Authors and editors can also submit papers to EconStor free of charge.

Research Guide EconDesk

The ZBW offers EconDesk, a free reference desk that will answer short, factual economics questions via phone, email, or online chat. Questions can be about statistical data, economic definitions, or specific country information. This service is available to the public worldwide without charge.

Digital Object Identifier registration

The ZBW operates da|ra, a service operated through the DataCite consortium, to provide Digital Object Identifier (DOI) registration for all German research centers in the fields of social sciences and economics. It also operates a comprehensive metadata schema to ensure proper citation of registered social and economic data.

Open Access

With its publication server EconStor the ZBW provides an infrastructure for the free publication of scholarly literature in economics and business administration. The mission of EconStor is to make research findings in economics accessible in Open Access and thus internationally visible. In addition, the ZBW produces the peer-reviewed journal Economics in cooperation with the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. The Journal is based on the principle of Open Access and Open Assessment and listed in SCCI. The ZBW is active in national and international bodies in order to foster the idea of free dissemination of research findings. Among these bodies are COAR, DINI or the Priority Initiative "Digital Information".

ZBW Journal Data Archive

The ZBW Journal Data Archive is a service for editors of journals in economics and management. It offers the possibility for journal authors of papers containing empirical work, simulations or experimental work to store the data, programs, and other details of computations, to make these files publicly available and to support confirmability and replicability of their published research papers.

Official depository library

The ZBW is a depository library of the World Trade Organization. All WTO publications are collected and made available. It is also designated a European Documentation Centre (EDC), receiving all official publications of the European Union and its organs, including the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and European Court of Justice (ECJ). The ZBW also collects and makes available the publications of the United Nations Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Publications

Since 1 January 2007 the ZBW serves as editor of two economic journals:

Wirtschaftsdienst

Wirtschaftsdienst – The Journal for Economic Policy (German: Wirtschaftsdienst – Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftspolitik) is an academic journal that has existed since 1916. It is published monthly by Springer Science+Business Media (ISSN 0043-6275) in German. The journal presents articles on current issues in German and European economic and social policy.

Intereconomics

Intereconomics – Review of European Economic Policy publishes papers dealing with economic and social policy issues in Europe. It has existed since 1966 and is one of the oldest journals covering macroeconomics. It is published bimonthly by Springer Science+Business Media (ISSN 0020-5346) in English. Since 2009 it is edited in cooperation with the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels.

International cooperation

Among others:

EconBiz Partner Network:

ADA University Library, Azerbaijan

AIM - Asian Institute of Management, Philippines

American University, Nigeria

Bank of Finland, Finland

BIBADM - School of Management's Library of the Federal University of Rio Grande Do Sul, Brasil

CIRANO, Canada

Corvinus University Library, Hungary

Cranfield University, UK

Harvard Business School, USA

Economic Faculty of the "St. Kliment Ohridski" University in Sofia, Bulgaria

Graz University of Technology and Graz University, Austria

HongKong Polytechnic University, China

IAE Business School, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Institute of Economic Research IER, Hitotsubashi University HIT, Japan

Instituto de Empresa Foundation, Madrid

International Balkan University, Library, Macedonia

Jaipuria Institute of Management, India

Koç University Suna Kiraç Library, Turkey

Library of Economic Faculty "St Kiril & Metodius", Skopje

National and University Library Skopje

Peking University, China

Peking University Library, China

Singapore Management University

SMU Libraries, Singapore

Sogang University, South-Korea

South East European University-SEEU, Macedonia

S P Jain School of Global Management, Australia, Dubai Singapore

Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, USA

Trakya University, Turkey

Universiteti i Prishtines, Kosovo

Universiteti i Shkodres, Albania

Universiteti i Tiranes, Albania

University Library of Svetozar Markovic, Serbia

University of Latvia

University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Administration, Slovenia

Universiti Teknologi Mara, Malaysia

Vesalius College, Belgium

WU Vienna - Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

Cooperation partners in the EU project MOVING (Training towards a society of data-savvy information professionals to enable open leadership innovation):

Ernst & Young GmbH, Germany

Technische Universität Dresden, Germany

Know-Center Graz, Austria

Institut Jozef Stefan, Slovenia

The University of Manchester, UK

GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany

Fundacja Progress and Business, Poland

Other affiliations

The ZBW is a member of a variety of national and international organizations, including:

Association for Information Science and Practice (DGI)

Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER)

Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB)

Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)

DataCite

German Library Association (DBV)

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)

Leibniz Association (WGL)

Middle East Virtual Library (MENALIB)

subito – Documents from libraries society

Projects

As part of the German national research infrastructure, the ZBW also conducts its own applied research. Some of the more notable projects include:

GeRDI GeRDI – Generic Research Data Infrastructure: The project aims to develop a distributed and linked infrastructure system for research data, Generic Research Data Infrastructure (GeRDI).

LOC-DB Linked Open Citation Database (LOC-DB): The project LOC-DB will develop tools and processes based on linked data technologies that will enable individual libraries to participate in an open, distributed infrastructure for the indexation of citations.

metrics metrics: MEasuring The Reliability and perception of Indicators for interactions with sCientific productS: The main focus of “*metrics” is on gaining a deeper understanding of alternative indicators for measuring scientific performance. It looks at the quality and reliability of indicators, but also whether they take account of discipline-specific characteristics.

MOVING The vision of the MOVING project is to develop an innovative training platform that enables people from all societal sectors (companies, universities, public administration) to fundamentally improve their information literacy by training how to use, choose, reflect and evaluate data/text mining methods in connection with their daily research tasks.

References

German National Library of Economics Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA

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