German and Scandinavian Studies
Yiddish Book Center
- Yiddish Book Center Digital Library & CollectionsLocated in Amherst, the Center is dedicated to preserving Yiddish books and making them accessible as part of their mission. View holdings by collection on their site or search for them in Discovery Search by limiting results by location.
Books in the Five College Libraries
- Discovery Search This link opens in a new windowSearch for print books and ebooks at UMass and the other Five College libraries. By default, results will include many formats including articles and films. To limit your results to books, find the 'Format' header on the results page and click 'Books' and/or 'eBooks'.
Once you find a book in Discovery Search, look for the location near the bottom of the record.
- If the location is 'UMass Amherst Du Bois General Collection' you have two options:
- Use the call number to find the book on the shelves. For information on how to use call numbers to locate print books, scroll down to the 'Call Numbers' section.
- Click 'Place Request' to have the book sent to the Du Bois Library held shelf on the lower level for pick-up.
- If the location is listed as a different Five College library:
- Click 'Place Request' to have the book sent to the Du Bois Library for pick-up.
The links to access each ebook vary but will match or look similar to these:
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⚠️ Note that you cannot access ebooks that are only available at Amherst, Smith, and Mount Holyoke online libraries. This FAQ explains alternatives.
Books Beyond the Five College Libraries
- WorldCat This link opens in a new windowWorldCat allows you to search the library catalogs of 10,000+ libraries around the world, though primarily in North America and Europe, for books, films, audio, and more. You will find significantly more German language material than we have locally. Click "View Access Options" on a record to request the item through Interlibrary Loan.
German Library Catalogs
Since WorldCat does not include the holdings of all German libraries, it can be useful to explore the catalogs of specific libraries.
This list also includes union catalogs, which allow you to search the holdings of many libraries at once.
- Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog (KVK)This is your best bet! The KVK is a "meta-catalog" that allows for simultaneous searching of several library catalogs, among them the union catalogs for Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and Southwest Germany. The list of covered catalogs keeps growing; it now includes Austrian and Swiss libraries, as well as an increasing number of other national catalogs.
- Gemeinsamer Verbundkatalog (GVK)German union catalog that searches the holdings of the Common Library Network (GBV) and the Library Network of Southwest Germany (SWB).
- Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB) / German National LibraryCatalog of Germany's central archival library, which aims to collect, permanently archive, and document all German and German-language publications since 1913, foreign publications about Germany, translations of German works, and the works of German-speaking emigrants published abroad between 1933 and 1945.
- German libraries on LibWebA directory of German libraries with links to their webpages where you will often catalogs. Some links are broken, but you can Google them to find a more up-to-date web presence. LibWeb also has lists for other German-speaking countries.
Lists of Library Catalogs
- European-wide Catalogs and ArchivesList of library catalogs by country created by the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) European Studies Section.
- German Studies: Catalogs and National BibliographiesList of catalogs for libraries in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland compiled by ACRL European Studies Section.
