We have put together the following collections of free online resources, databases and research platforms.
Open Access search engines
| BASE | Bielefeld Academic Search Engine contains more than 150 million documents of which about 60% are Open Access To find these documents enter access:1 next to your search terms into the search bar |
| DOAJ | articles from about 12,000 Open Access journals |
| OpenAire | Open Access online documents compiled into one search engine |
Repositories
| DINI | List of certified Open Access repositories |
| PUBLISSO | Life Sciences |
| EconStor | Economics |
| SSOAR | Social Sciences |
| ART-Dok | Arts |
| ostdok | Eastern Europe Studies |
| Propylaeum | Classical Studies |
| intRechtDok | Law |
You find repositories sorted by research areas here. Full text access might not be possible everywhere, but ordering articles is still possible via our request forms.
Old Prints & Manuscripts
| SLUB Dresden | Collections of the State Library Dresden |
| Munich Digitization Center | Collections of the State Library Munich |
| Wolfenbüttel Digital Library | Old prints of the Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel |
| Manuscripta germanica | Medieval manuscripts of the Berlin State Library |
| Heidelberg historic literature | Manuscripts, Charters, Incunabula and other old prints from the University Library Heidelberg |
| Gallica | Collections of the National Library of France |
| British Library | Maps and manuscripts from the British Library |
| ÖNB digital | Books and images from the Austrian National Library |
| Library of Congress | Collections of the Library of Congress |
| Trinity College | Collections of the Trinity College library |
| NYPL | Collections of the New York Public Library |
| Digital Public Library America | Digital library which containts collections of various US libraries |
| e-rara | Digitized rare books from Swiss institutions |
| Digivatlib | Collections of the Vatican Library |
| Digital Bodleian | Collections of the Bodleian Library |
Images
| Collection of image databases | link collection of the Art History Institute of the Free University Berlin |
| heidiCON | Multimedia database of the Heidelberg University |
| bpk | Agency BPK |
| Image-based similarity search | image collections of the State Library Munich |
| Europeana | collections of European archives, libraries and museums |
We are glad to investigate whether certain images may be reproduced in your publication and what the appertaining conditions might be.
Books
| DOAB | 25.000 freely available e-books |
| Internet Archive | collection of fair use e-books and loan of other e-books after personal login (no waiting list until June) |
| Hathi Trust | collection of fair use e-books from various institutions |
| Springer | Springer Open Access e-books |
Open Educational Resources
OER include complete onlince courses, text books and other material for online seminars like videos or presentations.
Family history
| Stolpersteine in Berlin | commemorative stones dedicating to all people persecuted by the NS regime |
| Berlin directories | directories from 1707-1992 |
| The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names | database of Yad Vashem |
| Holocaust Statistics | statistics of the jewish citizens of Germany during 1933-1945 (only in German) |
| Hamburg Passenger Lists 1850-1934 | database of German immigrants to the United States |
| Archives Library Information Center | link collection of genealogy resources |