TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library

Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) in the areas of energy, aviation, and aerospace research

Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) in energy research and energy technologies

Agency for Renewable Resources (FNR) on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMELV)

Leibniz Open Access Repository

The TIB is a member of the Leibniz Association, a consortium of 87 non-university research institutes in Germany. In support of the Association's open access goals, the TIB operates the Leibniz Open Access Repository in cooperation with Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure (formerly Fachinformationszentrum Karlsruhe). The TIB advises the Leibniz Association's various member organizations, scientists and staff on depositing publications in the repository according to open access guidelines.

Competence Center for Non-Textual Material

The amount, usage and importance of non-textual materials such as 3D models, AV media and research data is continually increasing and only a small proportion can be searched at the present time. The goal of the TIB Competence Centre for Non-Textual Materials (Kompetenzzentrum für nicht-textuelle Materialien, abbreviated to KNM) is to fundamentally improve access to, and the use of, such non-textual materials. The TIB also develops new multimedia analysis methods such as morphology, speech or structure recognition to create indexing and metadata to help researchers and educators make better use of these complex materials. In addition, the competence center is dedicated to the preservation of multimedia objects, the assignment of DOI, and knowledge transfer.

GetInfo online service

TIB operates the GetInfo portal for science and technology with interdisciplinary search capabilities for the other German National Libraries as well as access to more than 150 million data sets from other specialized databases, publishers and library catalogs. The TIB also makes scientific videos of lectures, conferences, computer animations, simulations and experiments available via GetInfo. These video items can be searched free-of-charge and can be downloaded via Flash Player.

Goportis library network

The TIB is one of three partners in the Leibniz Library Network for Research Information consortium Goportis, the others being the German National Library of Economics (ZBW) and German National Library of Medicine (ZB MED). This initiative develops and operates online search services, online full-text delivery services, licensing agreements, non-textual materials, document preservation efforts, data storage, and open access.

Research projects

As part of the German national research infrastructure, the TIB conducts its own applied research, particularly in the field of information science. In cooperation with a variety of other institutions, these projects focus on the areas of visual searching, data visualization, the Semantic Web, and the Future Internet.

PROBADO 3D

PROBADO is a project to develop tools for the automatic indexing, storage and delivery of non-textual documents such as 3D models. Its goal is to enable academic libraries to deal with multimedia objects just as easily as with textual information. Tools include searching by intuitive drawing in 2D and 3D and delivery of results while drawing. For this initiative the TIB partnered with the Technical University of Darmstadt, the University of Bonn and the Technical University of Graz.

Visual access to research data

This project, funded by the Leibniz Association, is a joint effort of the TIB, the GRIS Darmstadt (Interactive Graphics Systems at the Technical University of Darmstadt) and the IGD (Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics). It deals with developing approaches to the interactive, graphical access to research data in order to make it easily represented and searchable. The project is tasked with developing methods for data analysis, visual search systems, metadata-based searching and prototype implementation.

SCOAP3-DH

SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) is a global consortium of organizations in high energy physics, physics research centers and leading international libraries. Its goal is to convert essential journals in particle physics that are presently financed by subscriptions into open access journals with the support of the publishers. SCOAP3-DH is funded by the German Research Foundation, working in cooperation with the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) and the Max Planck Society (MPS).

Other research projects

Additional TIB research projects include:

arXiv-DH: development the Open Access platform arXiv for German universities and other institutions

DP4lib: development of a reusable and flexible infrastructure for digital preservation

Knowledge Exchange: a national initiative in Germany to extend the use of information and communications technology in research and teaching

KomFor: a Center of Expertise for Earth and Environment research data

Linked Heritage: metadata, standards, persistent identification and linked data systems for digital cultural heritage in Europe

STI Adaptations to Mobile Web Devices: approaches for enhancing access to STI through mobile devices

TIB-Transfer: development and implementation of a concept for the commercialization of research results

ViFaChem II: development of concepts and tools for the Virtual Library of Chemistry II