English Deutsch
Verbundzentrale des GBV

Information about GBV and the Head Office (VZG)

  • Contact Persons
  • Task and Goals
  • Members
  • Online Retrieval System
  • Ordering System
  • Local Library Systems
  • Publications and Presentations

The Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund (GBV) is the common library network of the seven German federal states Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia and the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage. The GBV head office is situated in Göttingen.

Task and Goals
The GBV is the cataloguing and service-oriented network of scientific, research and public libraries. The head office of the GBV (VZG) is responsible for library automation and the development of new innovative library specific services.

The work of VZG is characterized by the permanent effort to adjust the library network to the changing goals and expanding perspectives of modern library work. Based upon the shared cataloguing service as the fundamental task of the VZG, the responsibilities quickly expanded to offering Online-Interlibrary Loan (ILL), and document delivery service subito.

These tasks are carried out in close cooperation with national and international partners, the Library Network of Baden-Württemberg BSZ, of Hessen (HeBIS), the German National Library (DNB), OCLC, Austria (obvsg) and Switzerland (ids) and the Agence bibliographique de l´ enseignement superieur, France (ABES).

Members
More than 400 university, college and government sponsored research libraries within the territory of the participating federal states and of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), many public libraries and special libraries like TIB/UB Hannover and ZBW Kiel are members of the GBV.

Online Retrieval
The GBV has established a virtual library in form of the GBV Union Catalogue (GVK) combining the resources of all participating libraries and making them easily accessible to the public. The internet services are specifically designed for the needs of end-users by providing standardized layouts for all offered databases.

Ordering System
Nearly all available titles can be requested online via Online-Interlibrary Loan (ILL) and document delivery service subito.

Local Library Systems
The head office of the GBV supports more than 190 libraries in running a local library system with Pica-LBS-Software of OCLC. The LBS-package provides all necessary tools for the OPAC and librarian specific housekeeping functions like acquisition and circulation control.