The GIGA is home to the largest non-university information centre for area studies and comparative area studies in Germany. The four regional libraries collect literature on economic, political and social developments in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
GIGA-IZ Online Catalogue
Tip: You can use the asterisk for right truncation (e.g. election* conflict*). Terms that include umlauts or other non-English characters/symbols may
only be searched in the online catalogue.
Collection
The collection comprises 175,000 books and approximately 850 current journals – plus online documents. The information centre is publicly accessible and is operated as a reference library with the option of weekend lending. The publications are largely available for inter-library loan (red library ticket).
The Information Centre, an outstanding research library, is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Opening hours
Opening hours of the GIGA's libraries.
Tuesday to Thursday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Friday 10 a.m. - 4 p.m., Monday closed.
Information on licensed online journals are available in the electronic journals library (Elektronischen Zeitschriftenbibliothek (EZB)):
List of licensed online journals
Print Journals
Information on holdings of printed journals are available in the journals database (Zeitschriftendatenbank (ZDB)):
List of printed journals
Databases
Information on licensed bibliographic databases, reference books or encyclopedia are available in the database information system (Datenbankinformationssystem (DBIS)):
List of licensed databases
Researching the joint collection of the libraries
A large part of the collection is documented in the World Affairs Online-WAO, kept by the German Information Network International Relations and Area Studies (FIV-IBLK). Twelve independent German research institutes cooperate to form this collective information network.
There are two points of access to the joint collection:
ireon Portal (The International Relations and Area Studies Gateway)
Print