Engineering and Computer Science Library Biel/Bienne
The Engineering and Computer Science Library in Biel is a specialised academic library. It is a member of SLSP (Swiss Library Service Platform) and open to the public. A library ID is required to borrow media. We will be happy to help you with your research or obtaining documents. Please get in touch if you have any questions about the search platform swisscovery and the electronic resources.
swisscovery
use the swisscovery search platform to search nationwide in Switzerland
Opening hours
Mon–Thu
8am–5.30pm
Fr
8am–5pm
No lending
1pm–2pm
Ascension
Wed, 25 May: 8am–1pm
Thu, 26 May to Sun, 29 May: closed
Whit Monday
Mon, 6 June: closed
Contact
Quellgasse 21, 2502 Biel/Bienne
News
Training courses
The current dates of our training courses on literature research and reference management can be found on Moodle:
Self study
Webinar SpringerMaterials
How to find the data you need for your research
Topics:
- What Springer Materials is and how it can support your research
- How to find materials’ properties data using SpringerMaterials
- Practical examples
Please register for the SpringerMaterials info session on Wednesday, June 8, 2022 09–10am under this link
Special opening hours in 2022
| Easter Week | Monday, 11 April to Thursday, 14 April 2022 8 am to 1 pm, afternoon closed |
| Easter |
Good Friday, 15 April to Easter Monday, 18 April 2022 |
|
Ascension |
Wednesday, 25 May 2022 |
|
Whit Monday |
Monday, 6 June 2022 |
|
Summer |
Monday, 18 July to Friday, 16 September 2022 |
| Swiss Federal celebration | Monday 1st August 2022 closed |
|
Christmas/New Year |
Friday 23 December 2022 8 am to 1 pm, afternoon closed Saturday, 24 December 2022 to Sunday, 8 January 2023 closed |
Collection focus
- Automotive engineering
- Electrical engineering and information technology
- Computer Science
- Medical Informatics
- Mechanical engineering
- Micro- and medical technology
- Industrial engineering and management science
- as well as mathematics, natural sciences, business and communication
Holdings
The library holdings are freely accessible. All media except reference holdings can be borrowed.
Facilities and services
- 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
Borrowing and Terms of use
Below you will find details of the services and conditions of use of our library.
Terms of use
1. Scope
The following terms of use apply to the following libraries of the BFH Library:
- Architecture, Wood and Civil Engineering Library Biel/Bienne
- AHB/TI Library Burgdorf
- Health Library
- HAFL Library
- Swiss Literature Institute Library
- Social Work Library
- Engineering and Information Technology Library Biel/Bienne
- Business Library
- HKB Media Library
- HKB Music Library
The EHSM Sport media Library HSM, Magglingen has its own terms of use.
All these libraries are part of the Swiss Library Service Platform (SLSP) and accessible with search platform swisscovery, which is operated by SLSP.
2. User authorisation
The BFH Library provides information and literature for BFH students and employees. These are also available to other interested parties. Use of BFH libraries is free, although there are charges for specific services (see Fee table in FAQ about swisscovery).
3. Registration
By registering, the user accepts the present terms of use.
Registration (free of charge) on the swisscovery research platform is required for borrowing media and using other services. Therefore, a SWITCH edu-ID account is necessary and may be created during the registration process if it does not already exist.
The users are responsible for ensuring that the personal details they provide are correct and up-to-date (see SLSP General Privacy Statement). They must update their personal details (such as address) themselves in their SWITCH edu-ID account.
Employees of the BFH Library cannot make any changes to personal data.
The user can set the preferred address (home or work) in the swisscovery account and add or remove library cards: swisscovery – Library Card Management and Settings.
The library card is required for on-site borrowing. It is personal and therefor non-transferable. The library card may be purchased at any swisscovery library. BFH students and employees can use their BFHcard as a library card. Library cards issued by other swisscovery libraries are also recognised.
Further information: see User account section in FAQ about swisscovery.
4. Borrowing
Library items are generally available for borrowing. However, certain designated items can only be used on site. Special loan conditions may apply to individual media or media groups. A maximum of 100 items can be borrowed per user.
The standard loan period is 28 days for most media. Unless the borrowed item is requested elsewhere, it is automatically extended for a further loan period of 28 days (up to five times). The deadline is displayed in the swisscovery user account.
When the maximum loan period expires, the item must be returned. If the item has not been reserved, you can borrow it again from the lending desk.
Items should be returned prior to absences longer than the loan periods of the borrowed items (military service, holidays, study abroad etc.).
5. Courier service and postal delivery
Media can be ordered for collection at a charge from all BFH libraries participating in the SLSP Courier service. The terms of use of the supplying library apply. The University library pays the courier fees for BFH members, provided that the pick-up location is a BFH library. Requested media must picked-up within 6 library working days. Courier media that are not picket-up will be returned. The delivery fees must also be paid in the event of non-collection (see Borrowing + Courier section in FAQ about swisscovery).
For a fee, BFH libraries can send out items from their own inventories (see Costs section in FAQ about swisscovery).
6. Liability
Media should be handled with care, protected from damage and returned in an undamaged and complete condition. Notes and marks shall also be deemed to be damage. Any cost of repairs or replacement shall be assumed by the responsible party.
The user is fully liable for any damage or loss of borrowed documents. Existing damage or missing inserts (data carriers, cards, parts etc.) must be reported immediately, or at the latest upon the return of the material.
For damaged or lost media, the University library charges repair or replacement costs as well as handling fees (see Fee table in FAQ about swisscovery).
7. Costs
The user is responsible for adhering to loan periods. Reminders that are not received are not accepted as grounds for late returns. No correspondence will be entered into in this regard.
After the loan period has expired, an "Overdue items - Reminder" (free of charge) is sent from <noreply@slsp.ch>. Subsequent reminders are subject to a fee.
The third reminder also results in the blocking of the swisscovery user account. If the item is not returned it is entered as lost. The replacement costs and administrative fee are charged to the responsible party (see Fee Table in FAQ about swisscovery).
Overdue fees can be paid at the lending desk in cash or with TWINT if an invoice has not yet been issued.
8. Copyright issues and further use of media
Use of library media is governed by the Swiss copyright guidelines and is intended exclusively for personal use. Transfer to third parties and commercial use are prohibited.
Chamber music scores and scores for solo instrument with (piano) accompaniment may be given to third parties under the following conditions: The borrowing person is responsible for ensuring that all parts and possible supplements are returned on time, complete and in perfect condition (without annotations). If the music sheet or parts of it are returned too late or with annotations, the borrowing person is liable and will be charged the corresponding fees. Commercial use is also excluded.
Users are responsible for informing themselves about any copyright issues. The BFH declines all liability in the case of copyright infringement.
9. Using online resources and internet
For information about Conditions for access and use of online resources, see FAQ online resources.
Public workstations in the BFH libraries are primarily provided for information on online offerings and research for scientific, specialist, professional or educational purposes.
All users are required to observe legal provisions with regard to Internet use. With respect to liability, misuse and the consequences of misuse, we refer users to the Guidelines on the use of IT resources at BFH.
10. Conduct within the library
The conduct of users within the library areas must not impinge upon the rights of other persons, impact library operations or cause damage to equipment, facilities etc.
Users are obliged to comply with the instructions of library staff. Failure to do so can result in the user being asked to leave. Repeated or severe infringements of the terms of use can result in exclusion from library use.
[January 2022]
Ordering journal articles and acquisition request
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.
Using our resources
Search platforms
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.
swisscovery search platform
swisscovery search platform
The collections of the BFH Library (books, periodicals, DVDs, etc.; except for the library of the Abegg Foundation) can be searched using the swisscovery search platform: swisscovery.bfh.ch
swisscovery is operated by the Swiss Library Service Platform (SLSP).
eBooks
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
Springer Reference DE
A constantly updated collection of German-language reference works in psychology, humanities, social sciences, law, engineering, business and medicine
Freely accessible eBooks
DOAB – Directory of Open Access Books
A search portal for peer-reviewed, open-access books from academic publishers
eJournals
Fee-based eJournals
You can only access the fee-based contents of eJournals from within the BFH network or externally via a VPN.
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
Swiss national licences
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.
Electronic specialist databases
E-resources
Most of the bibliographic subject databases and other online resources offered by the BFH libraries are accessible to BFH students and staff on the BFH network (WLAN bfh or VPN), and are available to other library visitors at the research stations in the library.
Selection
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.
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
Search engines/platforms
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.
Bachelor’s thesis
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.
Lean Library – find scientific literature faster
The browser extension Lean Library leads you directly to electronic full-text content offered by your BFH library
Download Lean Library
- leanlibrary.com/download
- Install browser extension
- Select the library: Berner Fachhochschule
- Begin your search for academic literature. The Lean Library pop-ups lead directly to the full-text.
For best results, always activate the VPN.
Lean Library is available for
- Firefox
- Chrome
- Safari
- Opera
- Microsoft Edge
For Internet Explorer, only a limited version is available. The download for Internet Explorer requires administrator rights.
Use on mobile devices:
iOS operating system from Apple: Academic Browser
Android from Google: under development
Try Lean Library after download
- If the article you are looking for can be found on different platforms, Lean Library will take you to where you have direct access. >> test link
- If the e-book you are looking for is offered by the BFH libraries, Lean Library will take you directly to the free download. >> test link
- If you need a password to access a source, Lean Library will inform you accordingly. >> test link
- If you wish to search the swisscovery library system using a specific search term, click on the desired search term with the right mouse button on any website and select "search@BFH".
Highlight and Search
Lean Library enables you to initiate a search on the swisscovery search platform from any website:
- highlight one or more terms
- right-click with your mouse
- choose “Search@BFH” in the drop-down menu
- proceed to search in swisscovery
If you have any questions, please contact your BFH library.
Individual advice
Are you looking for information about a specific topic? Do you need help with your research? Would you like to find out about the (online) resources available in your subject area?
We’re here for you
We’re here for you!
Please get in touch and make an appointment for a 30-minute consultation.
You do not need an appointment for an introduction to the search platform swisscovery or the library itself.
Just drop by and report to the front desk.
If you need help with your research, please tell us your reason for contacting us and state the topic of your work in progress.
+ 41 32 321 64 62
Literature research
For information about literature research, please take the Moodle course ‘Literature Research BFH’:
To access the Moodle courses, you need to be logged into the BFH network or accessing it via a VPN.
To log in (click ‘Login with Switch edu-ID’), you need to use your BFH code and password. You do not need a registration key.
Reference management software can be used to store and organize bibliographic references and to export them from library catalogues and bibliographic databases.
Our team’s office hours
- Cornelia Zelger (management)
Monday to Thursday - Kathrine Winkler-Meylan
Monday, Thursday, Friday - Florence Jaquet
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday - Barbara Schaffner
Wednesday, Thursday morning - Gaia Renggli
Tuesday, Thursday afternoon
