Books

Chances are high that the book you are looking for is among the approximately 750,000 e-books and 100,000 print books currently licensed and purchased by Lib4RI. Our collections of books and other media are listed in our swisscovery catalogue. Inform yourself about all search options with the resources below!

Further resources

Infosheet Books

FAQs

FAQs

  • You need to be registered with the SLSP network to allow for book loans from Lib4RI and other SLSP libraries via the swisscovery platform. Detailed information is given at Search & Read > Books & e-books and on our information leaflet Lib4RI-Info: Books. For general information regarding Lib4RI and swisscovery please also refer to FAQ – General.

  • If you are registered with Lib4RI / SLSP as an affiliate of the four federal research institutes, you can order books via the swisscovery platform directly to your office location. This includes all main offices as well as the branches of Eawag (Dübendorf & Kastanienbaum), Empa (Dübendorf, St Gallen, Thun), PSI (Villigen) and WSL (Birmensdorf, Davos, Cadenazzo, Lausanne, Sion).

    Please refer to this table for the appropriate «pickup institution» and «pickup location» to choose during your swisscovery order and for details on how to obtain and return books.

    Please also see our information leaflets for users at Eawag Kastanienbaum, Empa St Gallen, Empa Thun, and WSL Davos.

  • Should you require books or other documents unavailable via swisscovery please contact our Document Delivery Service for a possible interlibrary loan.

  • The following checklist should assist you trouble-shooting access issues to electronic books:

    Please contact us via @email, or call the library at 058 765 5700 if you encounter any problem with the access to e-books.

  • Licensing agreements with electronic service providers restrict access to electronic resources, for which the library Lib4RI pays a subscription fee, to current members of Eawag, Empa, WSL and PSI. However, most licensing agreements permit visitors as so-called “walk-in users” on-site access to our electronic resources on publicly accessible library computers.

  • Access to licensed electronic resources (such as databases, e-journals or e-books) are governed by the conditions of use contained in licence agreements between the library Lib4RI and the respective publishers. These licences vary but have some common elements.

    You are generally not allowed to:

    • systematically download from an e-resource, e.g. all articles from one issue of a journal, or an entire e-book. Publishers may monitor use levels of electronic resources and suspend access to this resource in the entire network of the institution if large amounts of information are downloaded in a short time period.
    • share downloaded material with third parties (unauthorised users, i.e. anyone who is not a member of Eawag, Empa, PSI or WSL). Third party use is also uploading licensed content or data to external platforms, specifically ChatGPT or other AI platforms, where storage and future use are controlled by third parties.
    • use e-resources for commercial gain (i.e. reselling, redistributing or republishing licensed content).

    If you are planning to use licensed electronic resources for a text data mining or an AI project, please contact us at @email and we will help you clarify the conditions.

     

    Restrictions on using electronic resources from AIP

    From AIP, the American Institute of Physics, we got a longer list of Terms of Use (which is, at least more liberal and allows for instance the delivery to a colleague).