EconBiz – Virtual Library for Economics and Business Studies

EconBiz is a search portal for economics, managed jointly by the German National Library of Economics – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (ZBW) and the University and City Library of Cologne. The portal was started in 2002 as the Virtual Library for Economics and Business Studies. EconBiz was initially funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and is developed continually with the support of cooperation partners.

Aim

The portal 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.

Services

EconBiz offers a number of services:

• The search engine index gives access to international bibliographic references and full texts in economics. Each query searches the content of several German and international databases including articles, books, working papers and journals in both printed and electronic format, as well as economics internet resources and event announcements.
• Many online sources offer access to freely available full texts. Integrated web services also allow users to check the availability of printed or (licensed and charge-bearing) electronic items in their local library. A large proportion of publications can be ordered from the document delivery service subito.
• The index also integrates an overview of current national and international events in economics such as conferences, meetings and summer schools.
• Users can also request a librarian’s assistance during their search, by e-mail, chat or telephone, from the integrated online reference service EconDesk.
• An online tutorial, LOTSE, is available to users who wish to improve their information competence. It is intended to support students as well as teachers in all aspects of research for academic work. So far, LOTSE is available only in German.
• The free EconBiz App for iPhone, iPad and Android provides economics and business literature references and full texts.

Background

EconBiz was jointly developed by the German National Library of Economics – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (ZBW) and the University and City Library of Cologne (USB Cologne) as a DFG-funded project. The portal first went online in September 2002.

For the relaunch in October 2010, the metasearch was replaced by a search engine index (Lucene/SOLR). In addition, the Thesaurus for Economics was integrated in order to enable automatic searches for synonyms and translations. By integrating other web services, such as the Electronic Journals Library or the Journals Database, it is possible to check if and where an item is available.

Between October 2010 and January 2011, an ideas competition offered users of EconBiz the opportunity to contribute their own ideas for future EconBiz functions.

See also

• German National Library of Economics

Sources

• Pianos, Tamara (2010): EconBiz — Meeting User Needs with New Technology In: Liber Quarterly 20(2010)1, S. 4 - 24 Online unter: http://liber.library.uu.nl/publish/issues/2010-1/index.html?000488
• Ersfeld, A./Fingerle, B. (2003): EconBiz, die virtuelle Fachbibliothek Wirtschaftswissenschaften : ein Gemeinschaftsprojekt der USB Köln und der ZBW, in: Bibliotheksdienst, 37. Jg., 2003, H. 3, S. 320 - 329., Online verfügbar unter: http://bibliotheksdienst.zlb.de/2003/03_03_05.pdf
• Christof, J./Fingerle, B./Heyke, K. (2004): Metadatasharing : Verbundkatalogisierung von Internetquellen, in: ZfBB, 51. Jg., 2004, H. 3, S. 152 - 158., Online verfügbar unter: http://www.academic-linkshare.de/download/doc/verbundkatalogisierung_zfbb_3-2004.pdf

External links

• EconBiz
• German National Library of Economics(ZBW)
• University and City Library of Cologne(USB Köln)
• German Research Foundation(DFG)
• Reference service EconDesk EconDesk
• Academic LinkShare
• Ideas Competition EconBiz
• Thesaurus for Economics (STW)
• Download EconBiz-App for iPhone and iPad
• Download EconBiz-App for Android