University Library of Bern UB

E-Media

Terms of access and use

The University Library of Bern provides a variety of electronic media such as e-books, e-journals and databases.
Many of these e-media are subject to a fee and would not be allowed to be made publicly accessible for licensing reasons.

Legal Terms of Use

The following legal provisions must be observed:

Legal Terms of Use

  • The electronic media are intended for personal use and for use within the context of research and teaching only. Any commercial use is prohibited.
  • Access data such as passwords are confidential and may not be passed on to third parties.
  • The full texts (articles, chapters, entire books, etc.) may not be passed on to third parties, either electronically or in printed form, or made accessible online for third parties, as this exceeds the standard practice of scholarly sharing – the passing on of insignificant amounts of the licensed material intended solely for personal use and for use within the context of research and teaching.
  • The copyright for the electronic content are held by the respective rights holders (e.g. authors, publishers).
  • Copyright provisions of the publishers on their platforms (e.g. under Terms & Conditions) must be observed and adhered to.
  • Systematic extraction of full text or search results, so-called ‘bulk downloads,’ is prohibited in principle. In some cases, however, text and data mining is permitted. More information and contact details can be found here.
  • In many cases, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is contractually prohibited on publishing platforms . The use of AI must be discussed with us in advance.

Access options

In the research portal swisscovery University and PHBern, these accesses are only displayed within the campus network, in contrast to freely accessible e-media.

The access options to e-media are described here for each location and target group:

Access to e-media on campus for University Bern members / PHBern

Access with WLAN "eduroam" (login with campus account) or "public-unibe" (code available on site)

PHBern: Access with WLAN "eduroam" oder "public-phbern"

Access to e-media on campus for non-university members / alumni / members of other universities

Access to e-media outside campus for University Bern members / PHBern

Uni Bern:

  • Access with VPN client: The VPN client is installed on the computer and must be switched on in each case in order to access the e-media.
  • Access without VPN client: Another option is the SWITCHaai login (only for individual databases).

PHBern:

  • Access with VPN client: The VPN client is installed on the computer and must be switched on in each case in order to access the e-media.

Access to e-media outside campus for non-university members / alumni residing in the canton of Bern

Access to some licensed databases.
Login works via the SWITCH edu-ID, which everyone can register for.

Access to e-media outside campus for non-university members / alumi outside the canton of Bern

Only freely accessible e-resources are available for external guests.

Freely accessible e-media