Engineering and Information Technology 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. The NEBIS catalogue offers a free online registration form. Select BFH-TI-BI (Biel) as the home library. Afterwards, please come to our counter and present your valid official ID so that we can approve your account. Members of BFH can use their BFH card as ID.
If you already have a NEBIS or IDS ID, you do not need to register again.

Loan periods

Loan periods vary depending on the type of document and the specific NEBIS library. The standard period is 4 weeks.
Some documents have shorter loan periods; some cannot be renewed. You can see your return dates in your user account.
After the first four weeks, loans are automatically renewed twice. Afterwards, you can manually renew your loan online up to three times. Loans can only be renewed if the document has not been reserved by another user. You must return the document after the maximum loan period has expired. If nobody else has reserved the document, you can borrow it again.
If you are going to be absent for an extended period of time (holidays, stay abroad, etc.), please return all borrowed documents before your departure.
The loan period displayed in your online account or in the NEBIS catalogue is binding. If a document is reserved while on loan, it will only be recalled after that period expires. The same applies to renewed loan periods.
Any exceptions are at the discretion of the lending library.
Please contact the lending library directly. The staff of the Engineering and Information Technology Library cannot renew your loans on documents from other libraries.

Fees and fines

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 10.00 per document
2nd reminder: CHF 10.00 additional per document
3rd reminder: CHF 15.00 additional per document

Third reminders will be sent by post. The user account will be blocked. If the document is not returned after the third reminder, it will be marked as lost. You will be charged for the replacement and processing fee.
An invoice for the fines will be sent to you.

Fines in case of damage

Full cost of all repairs

Fines in case of loss

Full cost of replacement and a processing fee of CHF 50.00.

Collection and prosecution fee

At cost

Postage fees

per borrowed document:

• Domestic shipment: CHF 12.00
• International shipment: CHF 44.00

Photocopies

Copyright

The customer is responsible for 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 NEBIS 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-TI?

You can continue to use your NEBIS ID or your BFH card in the library networks of German-speaking Switzerland.
Please update your personal data and your email address in your user account, as your BFH email address will be deleted.

Courier service of the NEBIS libraries

NEBIS offers a free courier service between its member libraries. (This does not include libraries that are part of the NEBIS network but not the lending network.)
The terms of use of the supplier library apply.
You will receive an email or SMS as soon as your order arrives.

For orders of documents from the Zurich Central Library (ZB), please contact us.

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 librarys:  ~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 NEBIS catalogue 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 Information Technology 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 available in the NEBIS catalogue 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.

NEBIS Research

The online catalogue of the NEBIS Association lists all holdings of the Engineering and Information Technology Library.

Most media can be ordered online.

A library ID is required to borrow any media.

The catalogue also contains online resources.

Not all documents are freely available. Some are restricted to the network of the university that acquired them.

Members of Bern University of Applied Sciences can access media acquired by the BFH Library, i.e. those found when filtering for the ‘BFH’ tag.

nanoo.tv

NEBIS Research contains the extensive online film archive of Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).

Enter the code e65o4 to access all films.

Combine this code with other search terms to search for specific films.

To watch these films, navigate to ‘Online Access’ and select ‘Online access via nanoo’. Use Switchaai to log in with your BFH account.

Swissbib

The Swissbib catalogue lists the holdings of the libraries of all Swiss universities, universities of applied sciences, research institutions, the Swiss National Library and others.

The catalogue can tell you which libraries hold the found titles and how you can access them.

Helveticat

The catalogue of the Swiss National Library.

It contains everything published in and about Switzerland.

Rero explore

Catalogue of the Western Swiss Library Association (RERO) of the cantons of Fribourg, Geneva, Jura, Neuchâtel and Valais.

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.

Safari (max. 5 simultaneous access requests)

Online access to IT literature, mainly from anglophone publishers, such as McGrawHill, O’Reilly, Prentice Hall, Wiley and Addison-Wesley

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 90 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.