East Asian Databases at Berlin State Library: Acquisition Policy and Access Management [E]
The East Asia Department of the Sthe taatsbibliothek zu Berlin is in charge of a special collection focusing on East and South Asia and of literature within the federal system of German libraries supervised and partly financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation). Within this framework, the East Asia Department supplies German and European libraries with publications in East Asian languages by means of a special free interlibrary loan service.
To do so the department has built up an efficient system to provide access to printed and electronic resources not only for its local users but also for staff and students of German academic institutions registered with the East Asia Department. For registration and authentication to access the electronic resources, CrossAsia, the East and Southeast Asia Virtual Library, is used.
The East Asia Department only acquires and provides access to electronic resources which may be offered to local users and persons affiliated to registered academic and research institutions in Germany. Access to some of the databases is even open to a wider circle of users. For these databases national or European consortia licenses for libraries exist. In order to solve technical problems the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is host of most of the databases. Therefore smaller institutes’ libraries without technical experience, knowledge and budget can use the central setup in Berlin.