Photo: David Ausserhofer/IGB
About the Library
As a specialised scientific library we offer academic research services primarily for the employees working at the IGB. We are happy to provide support on the following topics, among others:
- Open Access, Open Science and scientific publishing
- Literature search and management
- Consulting and trainings to library knowledge transfer topics and scientific publishing
All our holdings can be found online in our catalogue. The Library has two locations: the main Library is located in Berlin Friedrichshagen and a smaller branch library is in Neuglobsow. We enable our users to access the collections of both locations. The library is a reference library and is accessible to institute staff around the clock. External users wishing to visit the Library are kindly asked to get in contact with us by appointment. The Library staff is happy to assist you by email, phone, or in person.
Collections and Holdings
Our print collections comprise about 30,000 catalogued items in stacks (as of 2020), mainly books, periodicals, reprints, university publications and research reports. We also preserve historical collections and archival documents (Rara) from the IGB‘s former institutions. Special collections such as the "Ditton-Library" contain unique resources on the social and economic value of recreational fishing. The Library also takes care of the IBG's institutional bibliography. Currently, over 8,700 IGB publications (as of October 2026) can be found online.
For the scientists at the IGB we provide licenses to full-text articles through Wiley, Springer Nature, Taylor & Frances, JSTOR, Nature, BioOne, and Oxford. Online we have access to ebooks and journal archives with more than 13,400 titles. Additionally, we provide access to the bibliographic database Web of Science and the ebook platform EbookCentral (reading mode since July 2026).
Open Access
The IGB welcomes and supports free open, online, and barrier-free access to and exchange of scientific research results and has adopted an Open Access Policy in 2019. We took part in the Leibniz publishing fund (until 2024) and created an IGB publishing fund since 2018 to enable the immediate open access publication of scientific articles. We support self-archiving of non open access articles via the so-called "green route".
Since 2022, the library has coordinated the DFG funding programme "Open Access Publication Costs", in which the IGB participates for a funding period of six years.
Cooperation and Networks
- Working group Bibliotheken und Informationseinrichtungen der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft
- Working group Open Access und Publikatonsmanagement der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft
- Working group Geo- und Umweltbibliotheken (GEOUM)
- Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Spezialbibliotheken (ASpB)
- Deutscher Bibliotheksverband (dbv)
- Kooperativer Bibliotheksverbund Berlin-Brandenburg (KOBV)
- Regional working group "Leibniz-Bibliotheken Berlin/Brandenburg"
