Tasks

The Alexandria Library Network gives employees of the Federal Administration and Armed Forces central and unified access to information sources available in the Administration. The Library am Guisanplatz BiG provides the network partners with specialist technical support and with up-to-date, efficient systems to manage their fonds and make them available to users.

History

Set up in 1996, the Alexandria Library Network was managed by the Federal Parliamentary and Central Library until 2008. When the federal libraries were centralised in 2009, this task was transferred to the BiG. In 2022 the network became a member of the Swiss Library Service Platform SLSP, thereby providing access to the collections of over 490 academic libraries via the search portal swisscovery.

Library network

Of the 15 libraries in the network, the BiG and the libraries of the Federal Statistical Office, the Château de Morges and its museums and the ETH military academy are open to the public (prior notification may be required). The other libraries’ services are only available to staff at the given institution.

Holdings

The holdings cover the Federal Administration areas of activity and contain academic literature including on law, politics, economics, statistics, social sciences, history and natural sciences.

Alexandria search portal

The library network’s collections comprise over a million physical titles. These can be searched for and ordered via the Alexandria search portal, either for borrowing or to obtain  copies of some pages. A wide range of digital federal publications and digitised special collections can also be found via the Alexandria portal, along with digital media from external sources. Since 2022, swisscovery has also been included in the Alexandria search interface, giving direct access to the holdings of over 490 academic libraries.

E-media are indicated in the search portal where possible and can be accessed via E-media.

Registration

If you are resident in Switzerland you can set up a user account for the Alexandria library network. You just need to complete the  and send it to any library in the networkregister on the Swiss Library Service Platform SLSP. Employees of the Federal Administration and Swiss Armed Forces can then apply to bibliothek@gs-vbs.admin.ch to be allocated to to appropriate user group and so obtain free access to all of the BiG’s services.