Engineering and Computer Science Library Biel/Bienne

• Front desk (loans and information)
• 40 workspaces
• 3 PC workspaces
• Wi-Fi access (bfh-open for external users)
• Daily newspapers, weekly press for use inside the library
• Research advice
• Copier
• Journal corner

The holdings of our library are freely accessible. All media except reference holdings can be borrowed.
You require a library ID to borrow any media.
It is personal and non-transferable. A valid form of official ID must be presented to obtain it.
The BFHcard can be used as a library card at BFH libraries and swisscovery libraries.

A swisscovery user account is required to borrow, order and reserve items. Register on the Swiss Library platform SLSP/swisscovery. Log in using your SWITCH edu-ID and provide consent for your personal details to be transferred to the library system.
If you don’t already have one, a SWITCH edu-ID can be created during the registration process. Please register “without AAI”.
You will find help on registration at: https://registration.slsp.ch/help/. Companies and institutions are requested to e-mail swisscovery@slsp.ch directly.

Registration is free of charge. Please adhere to the libraries’ terms and conditions of use.

If you already have a swisscovery account, you can also enter the BFHcard code as you can manage your library cards yourself as a user. The code to be entered is found on the back of the BFHcard below the barcode.

Media can be borrowed directly from the lending desk on site or ordered online via swisscovery and collected from the library after presentation of the library card.

Media is available for collection from the lending desk for seven days on which the library is open.

Lending periods

The lending period for books is generally 28 days and 14 days for non-book items (e.g. DVDs). The return date can be seen in the swisscovery user account. Providing the media borrowed is not requested by another user, the lending period is automatically extended five times from the end of the first lending period.

The return of the media at the end of the maximum lending period is mandatory. Provided no reservation has been made, it may be borrowed again.
Please return the media before longer absences (holidays, stays abroad, etc.).
The lending period indicated in the user account or in swisscovery is binding. A document is recalled after the expiry of this period in the event of a reservation. This also applies to the lending period after an extension.

The lending library has sole discretion to decide on rules of exception. Please contact the library concerned directly. The Engineering and Information Technology Library’s staff cannot extend lending periods for media from other libraries.

Fees and compensations

It is the responsibility of the user to ensure that loan periods are observed. Notifications not received (by post or e-mail) are not grounds for late returns.

Reminders

Recall/ message: free
1st reminder: CHF 5 per document
2nd reminder: additional CHF 5 per document
3rd reminder: additional CHF 10 per document

The third warning also results in the blocking of the swisscovery user account.
If the document is not returned after the third reminder, it will be marked as lost. You’ll be charged for its replacement. Furthermore, a processing fee applies. The relevant invoice will be sent to you.

Compensation in case of damage

Full cost of all repairs

Compensation in case of loss

Full cost of replacement and a processing fee amounting of CHF 30

Collection and prosecution fee

Actual costs incurred

Postage fees

per borrowed document:

• Domestic shipment: CHF 12
• International shipment (only for libraries):
  Europe: CHF 24
  UK and Overseas: CHF 36

Photocopies

Copyright

It’s the customer’s responsibility to ensure compliance with the applicable provisions of the copyright act. The documents supplied are for personal use only and may not be used commercially in any form.

Returning documents

You can return borrowed documents to the Engineering and Information Technology Library or another member library of the SLSP lending network. Alternatively, you can return them in the post. Please package all posted documents carefully. The return by post is at your own risk.

Are you leaving BFH?

Your BFHCard can still be used. Simply make sure to update your personal data and your e-mail address in your Switch edu-ID account, as your BFH e-mail address will be deleted.

What is the SLSP Courier?

The SLSP Courier connects academic libraries throughout Switzerland and replaces previous courier services such as the IDS Courier and the NEBIS loan network. The SLSP Courier enables you to have books transferred from one library to another within 48 hours for a fee of CHF 6 per item ordered (delivery/return). Some institutions waive this fee for their members. The libraries at BFH, including EHSM, cover these costs on behalf of their students and staff.

Which libraries use the SLSP Courier?

When you order an item, you will see whether a library uses the SLSP Courier service.

Delivery periods

Documents from the ETH library:     ~ 3 days
Documents from the BFH-AHB/TI-BU library in Burgdorf:  courier service 2x a week: Tuesdays and Fridays
Documents from other member libraries:  ~7 days

Please note:
The time can be considerably longer for documents that have already been loaned out or are difficult to obtain, or during the semester break.

Ordering journals articles

You can use the search platform swisscovery to order journal articles.
Fees for this service vary. Please consult the fees list of the respective library.
Members of BFH-TI can order article copies from the Engineering and Computer Science Library. This applies to articles from journals that are not available online.
Please send the details of the article you require (title, author(s), journal title, volume, number/issue, year, page reference to the following email address biblio.ti-bi@bfh.ch.

Acquisition request

We welcome suggestions for new purchases.
Please make sure to check whether the required document is already indexed on the search platform before you submit a purchase request.
Then send us as much information as possible (author, title, publisher, ISBN) and your user number. We will look into every suggestion.
You will hear back from us within a week. If we do purchase the document, it will be reserved for you automatically. You will be informed by e-mail about its arrival and the document will be waiting for you at the library.

BFH swisscovery

The complete collection of the Engineering and Computer Science Library is indexed on the BFH swisscovery platform. Most media can be ordered online. Please note that a library ID is required to borrow media.
BFH swisscovery is part of the new nationwide search platform. It lists over 30 million books, series, magazines and non-book items as well as over 3 billion articles.
swisscovery is operated by SLSP, the Swiss Library Service Platform. SLSP was initiated by 15 universities. As of today, 475 libraries are affiliated.

Users of BFH swisscovery have the possibility to extend their search to the overall collection of all 475 affiliated libraries with just one click (swisscovery).

Helveticat

The catalogue of the Swiss National Library.

It contains everything published in and about Switzerland.

Renouvaud

Network of the libraries of the Canton of Vaud.

Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog KVK

A meta catalogue of citations for media held in the catalogues of libraries and bookshops worldwide.

Fee-based eBooks

You can only access the fee-based contents of eBooks from within the BFH network or externally via a VPN.

O'Reilly for Higher Education

Online access to computer science, electrical engineering, economics - offer of latest publications, videos, interactive learning from over 250 publishers

Springer Link

Online access to the collections ‘Technik und Informatik’ (from 2011), ‘Engineering’ (from 2013), ‘Medizin’ (from 2010), ‘Sozialwissenschaften und Recht’ (from 2010), ‘Wirtschaftswissenschaften’ (from 2007), ‘Business and Economics’ (from 2011), ‘Energy’ (from 2016), ‘Naturwissenschaften’ (from 2017)

Hanser eLibrary

Online access to about 150 titles published by Hanser Fachbuch Verlag. Subjects include mainly computer science, mechanical engineering and business. No access to the journals.

WISO eBooks

eBooks on business, management and other topics

getAbstract

A database containing abstracts of recent business literature in the fields of management, strategy, business, politics and innovation

ProQuest eBook Central

A selection of eBooks purchased for BFH

Pschyrembel Online

A medical specialist dictionary containing English translations

FH e-Ressourcen – E-Books

Collections of eBooks jointly licensed or bought by all universities of applied sciences

Springer Reference DE

A constantly updated collection of German-language reference works in psychology, humanities, social sciences, law, engineering, business and medicine

Reference works

Brockhaus, Duden, Encyclopedia Britannica, Le Grand Robert, etc.

Freely accessible eBooks

DOAB – Directory of Open Access Books

A search portal for peer-reviewed, open-access books from academic publishers

Fee-based eJournals

You can only access the fee-based contents of eJournals from within the BFH network or externally via a VPN.

EZB Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek

You can use the EZB to find out which journals have been licensed by the libraries of Bern University of Applied Sciences.

FH e-Ressourcen – Zeitschriften

An alphabetic list of open-access journals and journals licensed by the Consortium.

Springer Link

Online journals (abstracts, full texts) from Springer

Science Direct/Elsevier

Online journals (abstracts, full texts) from Elsevier

WISO Fachzeitschriften

eJournals about information technology, business and other topics

Individually licensed journals

JAMIA – online access to the Journal of American Medical Information Association

The official, peer-reviewed journal of the American Medical Information Association

SZP – Schweizer Zeitschriftenportal

A directory of print and electronic journals held in Swiss libraries.

Does not support direct searches for journal articles/studies.

Freely accessible journals

DOAJ - Directory of open access journals

Access to full-text articles from peer-reviewed, open-access journals; covers all subjects and many languages

OpenDOAR

The Directory of Open Access Repositories is a public collection of publications from many university document servers.

e-periodica

Free full-text access to digitised Swiss journals about science and culture (includes architecture and engineering)

Paperity

A new, interdisciplinary full-text database of articles from open-access journals

arXiv

A pre-print repository at Cornell University containing contributions in physics, mathematics, information technology, quantitative biology and statistics

The archives of the following publishing houses are available to the entire population of Switzerland:

• Cambridge University Press (articles published between 1770 and 2015)

• De Gruyter (articles published between 1826 and 2015)

• Oxford University Press (articles published between 1895 and 2015)

• Springer Nature (articles published between 1832 and 2012)

These archives contain all journals of the above publishing houses from the very first issue until 2015.

Content from 2016 will be available after an embargo of 2 (De Gruyter), 3 (Oxford University Press), 4 (Springer Nature) and 5 (Cambridge University Press) years, respectively.

The same rule will apply to later years.

The universities of applied sciences have jointly licensed specialist databases and other electronic resources for various subjects. You can access them from the BFH network or externally via a VPN (virtual private network).

Universities of applied sciences e-resources by subject and type (Swissuniversities)

BFH-licensed databases

e-norm (Schweizerische Normen-Vereinigung SNV)

Citations for 2.1 million standards, full-text access to tens of thousands of standards from the SN (INB/SWISSMEM), ISO, Electrosuisse and SIA.

Access from within the BFH network or via a VPN.

An additional login is required.

For information about logins for students and staff of the AHB and TI department, consult the Intranet.

If you enter the wrong password repeatedly, your database access will be locked.

It is automatically unlocked again after 5–10 minutes.

If you enter the wrong password repeatedly, your database access will be locked. It is automatically unlocked again after 5–10 minutes.

IEEE/IET Electronic Library (IEL)

A database licensed by the BFH Department of Engineering and Information Technology.

The IEL offers you full-text access to current literature (from the beginning to present day) in electronics, electrical engineering and computer sciences.

Techniques de l’ingénieur:

Industrial engineering

This database is the most important source of French-language information in the fields of engineering and science.

The university has licensed the ‘Industrial Engineering’ package, which includes content on logistics, conceptualisation and production, and industry management.
It also contains a multilingual specialist dictionary (French, English, German, Spanish).

Embase

Pharmacological and biomedical database

Freely accessible databases (medicine)

PubMed

Reference database for medicine and biomedicine with more than 28 million references. A free service of the National Library of Medicine (NLM, USA).

Access to MEDLINE (since 1966, with MESH), OLDMEDLINE (1949–1965, without MESH) and PubMedCentral.

Cochrane Kompakt

Selected reviews in the fields of public health, midwifery, nursing sciences, physiotherapy, urology and current issues

BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)

A worldwide search engine for academic online documents. 60% of documents indexed in BASE are freely accessible in full (open access); the index comprises more than 100 million documents from over 5,000 sources.

Google Scholar

A special Google search engine for academic literature research.

It contains journal articles, papers, dissertations, theses, pre-prints and books from academic publishers, specialist publishers and universities either as full-text versions or references.

Google does not provide any information about the scope, selection criteria, currency and coverage of the materials.

duckduckgo

A search engine that claims not to store any personal details nor search queries.

The book search provides access to abstracts of all students’ bachelor’s theses since 2012.
You can search the abstracts by key words or by divisions.
The archive contains abstracts of the works from 2006 to 2011.

With the browser extension "Lean Library" you can find the full text of the scientific literature available at the BFH. The following browsers are recommended: Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera or Edge. For Internet Explorer "Lean Library" is only available in a limited version.