Profile

Today, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Library is one of the world's largest scientific specialized libraries, with the following areas of collection emphasis:

• Past and present of the German and international Labour Movements,
• German and international social and contemporary history,
• current publications by political parties and trade unions from Germany and selected countries.

In Germany, the foundation library constitutes the largest trade union library, owning large stocks that are partly complete, e.g.

• the library of the Federal Executive Committee of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB)
• many of the DGB's individual member trade unions
• many international trade union organisations

With this collection profile, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Library makes a major contribution to the national literary supply. Since 1976, it has enjoyed wide-spread acclaim as a scientific specialized library and has been comprehensively supported in many ways by the German Research Community (DFG). The acquisition of grey literature from abroad, projects for the indexing of important specialized collections, retro-digitization and putting on film as well as the development of the "FES Net Source: History and Politics" have been made possible due to DFG support. You can find a detailed report on this topic in:

The library also offers publications by trade unions and political parties ("grey literature") from selected countries of Western Europe, North America and the Third World as well as by international trade union organisations (International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, International Trade Secretariats) and the Socialist International (SI). The library is active in various library consortiums and participates in the (national and international) inter-library lending network (library abbreviation: ).
You can find further information on the library in:

• "Die Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung" von Rüdiger Zimmermann
• "Das gedruckte Gedächtnis der Arbeiterbewegung : Festschrift zum 30-jährigen Bestehen der Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung"
• Article in the German language Wikipedia

The library offers large collections on the following areas:

• Publications by all major political parties and trade unions in Germany and Western Europe and a selection of titles on these organisations
• Politics, recent social history, contemporary history, basic legal literature
• National Socialism, the Holocaust, Anti-Semitism
• Publications from the former GDR and the former Eastern-bloc states
• East-West Tensions
• Developing Countries / Third World
• Women's movement, emancipation, social equality
• Migration, the situation of foreigners in Germany
• New social movements, alternative press
• Domestic and foreign newspapers and periodicals (more than 1,000 titles on microfilm)
• Article Data Base covering more than 200 periodicals from 1994 onwards, offering a differentiated search strategy feature (only available in the library)
• Publications by the Library of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation
• Publications by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation - more than 10,000 titles, offering an individual search strategy feature on the Internet

Full Text Offers on the Internet

• More than 3.000 publications, especially by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, under "Digital Library"
• Programm-Edition "IALHI Project: Programmatic documents of the SI and the European Trade Union Confederation"
• Recent press releases by political parties and trade unions from Germany and Europe, offering a full text search feature
• SPD Press Releases after 1945
  • Sozialdemokratischer Pressedienst 1946 - 1995
    [Social-Democratic Press Service in the years 1946-1995]
  • Pressemitteilungen und Informationen der SPD 1958 - 1998
    [SPD Press Services 1958-1998]
• "Chronik der deutschen Sozialdemokratie"
  ["Chronicle of German Social Democracy"] by Franz Osterroth and Dieter Schuster (full text search)
• "Chronik der deutschen Gewerkschaftsbewegung von ihren Anfängen bis 1918"
  ["Chronology of the German Trade Union Movement from its beginnings until 1918"] by Dieter Schuster (full text search)
• "FES-Netz-Quelle: Geschichte und Politik"
  ["FES Net Source: History and Policy"] with sources and literature

©Friedrich Ebert Foundation | webmaster | technical support | net edition Library of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation | 17.01.2005