Use the library

Who may borrow?
As well as students and employees of the Charité, anyone over the age of 16 (a minor with written consent from a parent or guardian) who has proof of residence in Berlin / Brandenburg can borrow. At registration you will need your ID card or passport plus proof of residence. For students at the Charité, FU and HU, the student ID card also serves as your library user card. The library user card or student ID card enables borrowing at all site libraries of the Medical Library as well as in the University library of the FU.

Library account
At registration, a user account will be established for you with an account number and password - Charité students have a library account available at enrollment.

At the Charité's online catalog can see your account with loaned items and any applicable fees. You can renew loans, reserve items, edit the password for your account, and more.

A  change of address must be self-reported in the Charité Portal for Student and Examinations Administration. Please note that you login there with your Charité login details.

Email notifications
Library system notifications about returns, reminders, etc. are sent up to the second time by email. The third reminder will be sent as a letter by post. Notification of reserved items are only sent by email.

User number
You can find your user number on your ID card under the barcode (1380E…), for Charité students the whole number on the student ID card applies, beginning with HUCH…

Password

The initial password to access an online account for ID cards consists of:

• Date of birth (six characters) + first letter of Surname (Capital letter) + exclamation mark.
• For example for Peter Mustermann, born 28.11.1975: 281175M!

In the account section of Library Portal Primo you can change your password yourself. Passwords must consist of at least 8 characters.

Please get in touch at one of our library sites if you have problems accessing your account.

Important note: Passwords created or updated before 2019 were reset to the initial password described above.

Loan
A valid library user card is a requirement for borrowing books and other media. The loan period is 4 weeks. Users with disabilities can request that the loan period is altered to 6 weeks.

The maximum number of items on loan is limited to 100.

Loan-period extensions
As long as loaned materials are not already reserved by other users, the loan period can be renewed a number of times. After six months the item must be brought into the library before it can be renewed.

You can carry out the loan period renewal yourself, in your user account area.

There is also the possibility to renew the item by phone, by email or by letter, through library staff assistance.

Reservations
Registered readers can reserve items already out on loan through the online catalog, and can order items from the closed stack.

Registered Charité employees have the additional possibility of ordering items that are not already out on loan, to have them delivered to the site library at the campus where they work. Please provide the pick-up location of your choice when ordering.

You will receive a notification by email when the reserved item is ready for you to pick up.

Please note the library user regulations and regulations for fees.

Single and group workspaces
In the Medical Library, as well as single workspaces there are also group workspaces at the site libraries at CCM, CVK and ZMK, some of which can be reserved in advance at the issue desk.

PC-workstations in the Medical Library
For your researches you can use PC workstations with networked printing machines. Internet access to online resources of the Medical Library is available.

You have the option to print out search results, send results as an email attachment or save them on a USB memory device.

Please note that reading, printing, downloading and all forms of access are covered by terms and conditions and copyright law.

PC-workstations in Campusnetwork
At your workplace, members of the Charité have access to all electronic resources of the medical Library (e-journals, e-books, databases) through the campus network, usually without a special login or password.

Printing, Copying, Scanning
All Medical Library sites are equipped with corresponding multifunctional devices.

You can scan items, send scans out by email or save them on a USB memory device. From our PC workstations, you can print directly. Printing from a USB stick (PDF only) is also possible.

For a fee, you can get Printouts or copies. (A4: 0,05 € / A3: 0,10 €). Coins are required for this.

Charité employees can use these machines free of charge. Please bring your Charité ID card to the issue desk as a security deposit against a required key. 

Use of the lockers
The library provides coin operated lockers, which you can use to stow items which are not allowed to be taken into the library (§ 11 user regulations).

You will need either a €1 or €2 coin, which will be returned afterwards.

For using the lockers of the Central Library (CVK) you can also bring your own U-lock (diameters 5-6mm) with you.

WLAN
Charité members have access to the Internet via eduroam at all library locations. Access requires personal Charité registration data (Charité e-mail address and password). Members of other universities can also login using their access data from their home institution.

A free guest WLAN is available to all other library visitors at the Charité. To use the network "Charité-Gast" neither a registration nor a password is necessary but the terms of use have to be accepted.

Access to e-media
To use the licensed online resources of the library with a laptop, access via VPN is required in addition to the Internet connection.

Virtual Private Network (VPN)
In order to work outside the network of the Charité, the IT department will support Charité members upon request, by setting up a VPN access (linked content is only available on the Charité intranet). In conjunction with Internet access, the Charité network can then be accessed via VPN with external PCs and laptops. The use of mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones is not possible as operating systems such as iOS, Android etc. are not supported.

• Application as PDF for download (Charité Intranet only):
  VPN application
• List of the groups of people who can obtain VPN access to use the online resources:
  Access authorization to licensed electronic journals, databases and e-books

Members of the Charité can use the campus license for the reference management software EndNote.

EndNote Online

Through the Charité license for Web of Science, the web-based reference management tool EndNote Online (formerly EndNote Web) can be used free of charge. Prerequisites for this are VPN access to the Charité network and a personal registration on the Web of Science website.

Software license to install EndNote

Information on access, license terms, and ordering and delivery of the software is available on the IT department’s intranet pages.

Further information about reference management tools
An overview of the various functions, operation and license/price models of the reference management tools Citavi, EndNote, EndNote Web, RefWorks, Zotero, Mendeley and JabRef has been compiled by the library at TU München.