News

The annual article quota for Nature Research Journals under the Read & Publish contract with SpringerNature is exhausted. Therefore, no APC costs can be covered under this agreement until the end of 2023.

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The University Library of Bern continued to dedicate itself to the further development of digital services in 2022. The Annual Report 2022, which has just been published, provides insight into the UB's diverse areas of work and looks back on selected projects and events.

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As of January 2023, the catalog data of the University Library of Bern is searchable in WorldCat, a search engine for library holdings around the world. Media that are only available at the UB Bern can thus be found worldwide: For example, titles from the Center for Historical Book Collections (ZHB) or the Swiss Eastern European Library (SOB). 

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Bern is haunted: the new online game "The Phantom of Münstergasse" takes you to the former City and University Library around 1900. In this historical "Educational Escape Room" and mystery game, puzzle fans and all other curious people can train their research skills for library portals such as Literapedia Bern, E-Newspaperarchives or DigiBern. 

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In 1543, the year of his death - which this year marks the 480th anniversary - Nicolaus Copernicus published a book of enormous explosive power. In it, he tried to explain the planetary motions, which were still very mysterious at the time, by means of a heliocentric view of the world. However, his proposal also threatened to displace the Earth from the center of God's creation and led to a series of book bans. In its current exhibition in the vaulted cellar of the Münstergasse Library, the Center for Historical Collections of the UB Bern casts selected spotlights on this revolution in the history of science. Read more (in German)

The University of Bern and swissuniversities will continue to provide funds in 2023 to support researchers in publishing in OA. Information on the funding criteria, the application form and the status of the available balance can be found here. The agreement with Frontiers for publications by researchers of the University of Bern has been renewed for 2023 aswell. This means that until the credit balance is exhausted, publications that meet the fund's eligibility criteria will be paid for directly by the fund without the need for authors to submit an application. Read more

The already existing Read & Publish portfolio at University of Bern could be expanded with American Chemical Society (ACS) (2023-2025). Members of the University of Bern and PH Bern are eligible to participate. In addition to the existing agreement, Swissuniversities has negotiated a new article quota with SpringerNature, thanks to which around 50-60% of the annual publication volume can be published free of charge in the hybrid titles of the Nature Research Journals. This agreement runs until the end of 2025.The existing agreement with SpringerNature has also been extended until the end of 2025. Read more

Love Data Week is an international week of action in which research data is discussed. Under the motto "Data: Agent of Change", numerous events on a wide variety of research data topics were offered worldwide from February 13-17, 2023.

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With the implementation of extended ordering options in swisscovery, the most popular lending services of the University Library of Bern via swisscovery are free of charge for all UniBE employees. This includes media delivery by SLSP courier throughout Switzerland, media delivery by mail, ordering digital copies, and interlibrary loan.

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24/01/2023 - As part of the EU project CRAFT Open Access, the University Library of Bern is participating in the development of better tools and services for publishing scientific journals. Together with the University of Bern, 23 institutions from 14 countries are participating in the project to jointly shape the scientific publishing landscape of the future.

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About 35 publications documenting the history of localities in the canton of Bern are available digitized on DigiBern. In a pilot project, the links to the digitized material were supplemented with further links: for example, with the entry in the library catalog and with the link to web services such as the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, ortsamen.ch or Wikidata. In addition, the individual publications were displayed on an interactive map. This georeferencing makes connections more apparent and browsing more intuitive. Read more

SciFlow makes it easy to write and format scientific texts – whether for a specific journal or as a student paper. SciFlow also offers attractive templates, chat support and text checking. The services of the University Library of Bern has licensed SciFlow for the entire campus of the University of Bern. Read more

Books dating from 1700 to 1900 from the University Library of Bern and the Central and University Library of Lucerne are now digitally accessible on Google Books. Links to this offer can be found in the Swiss library catalog swisscovery. These historical holdings are thus easier to find than before and are additionally accessible as searchable full text. Read more (in German)

Since the founding of the University Library in 1528, donations have made a central contribution to the expansion of the holdings. Even today, books and other media continue to arrive at our library in this way. If they were published before 1900, they are cared for by the Center for Historical Holdings (ZHB). In the current exhibition, the ZHB is showing some selected examples of donations from recent years. Read more (in German)

On November 14, you will be able to access the optimized swisscovery system for ordering materials from the library. We will continue to develop the system, but customers already benefit from more detailed information on the cost of services. The system searches for the least expensive way to deliver items, and aims to deliver them as quickly as possible. Swisscovery now saves your pick-up locations, and you can more easily find information in your user account. Read more

A read & publish agreement with ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) came into effect retrospectively on June 1st, 2022. The read part enables access to all contents of the ACM Digital Library in the network of the participating institutions (University of Bern, PH Bern, hospitals Insel and Tiefenau) with the exception of eBooks. The publish part also includes all publications of the ACM Digital Library with the exception of the eBooks. Read more

The credit agreed with Frontiers for open access publications has been exhausted since 26.09.2022. For members of the University of Bern this means until the end of 2022: APCs for Open Access publications in Frontiers journals have to be paid from funds to be acquired by the members themselves. Financing of APCs via the OA publication fund is not possible. Read more

The article quota set by swissuniversities under the Read and Publish agreement with Wiley has been exhausted. This means that until the end of 2022, members of the University of Bern as well as affiliated institutions will have to acquire funding themselves for APCs for open access publications in hybrid journals at Wiley. Read more

On September 10, it is finally time again: after a long break, the University of Bern is holding the "Night of Research". The Open Science team of the University Library of Bern will also be manning a stand and, on the one hand, familiarizing visitors with the entire range of services in the field of Open Science and, on the other hand, inviting them on a creative and informative scavenger hunt for data. Read more (in German)

Insight into current research topics in the humanities and social sciences: The season program of the "Buch am Mittag" event series is now online.

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In the past year, the work of the University Library of Bern continued on important projects - despite Corona. In addition to the basic library mission, digital offerings continued to expand, the new Boris portal went live, the new "Swiss Library Service Platform" was consolidated, and much more.

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The collection of digitized newspapers in the canton of Bern is growing: 555,000 pages of Biel newspapers from the year of publication 1850 to 1995 are now freely accessible online. They can be read, viewed and searched in full text.

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The University Library of Bern and its services are open to all – including people with temporary residence permits and refugees. 

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