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The library of the Hans Arnhold Center

The Hans Arnhold Center Library

The Hans Arnhold Center Library is a private reference library consisting primarily of materials written and donated by the members of the American Academy in Berlin board, fellows, Distinguished Visitors, lecturers, staff, and other guests. The library collection include over 9,000 holdings, focusing on the interests of English-speaking scholars in the humanities and political science. Key academic texts of our fellows, selected English translations of the classics and German Literature as well as the estate of the American journalist and public intellectual Melvin Lasky support the research made at the Academy. The further major subjects of the holdings are relations between the United States and Germany, German and US-American history, European politics, and local history.

If you are interested in our holdings prior to your arrival at the Academy, please use the search engine of our online catalog below:

Library Services

Library services provided at the Academy include:

  • Use of the library collection at the Hans Arnhold Center;
  • Inter-library loans from Berlin collections and Germany-wide;
  • Liaison librarian services
  • Literature reviews
  • Research support in finding relevant archives and collections in Berlin and Germany
  • Support in organizing archive visits and accompanying you, if necessary
  • Borrowing children’s books according to your / your child’s preferences
  • Borrowing music scores
  • Borrowing dictionaries, lexica, encyclopediae, and thesauri
  • Scanning service
  • Online references and digital dictionaries through the your personal registration at the Berlin State Library

Access policy: 

For the use of the library services at the American Academy in Berlin please register in the local library system Koha. The library of the American Academy in Berlin is reference library designed exclusively for the Fellows, Distinguished Visitors, trustees, and staff of the American Academy in Berlin. The library participates in the public cooperative library network GBV. The archive of the American Academy in Berlin is open for academic or research inquiries from the public. Please address such requests to Ilya Oehring, Manager, Library Services, HAC Library and Archive (see contact below).

Duration of services:

Fellows and Distinguished Visitors may utilize the library services during their stay at the American Academy in Berlin. Library services expire with the end of the fellowship.

Acquisition policy:

The library collection has been created with generous support and donations of the members of the American Academy in Berlin board of trustees, fellows, Distinguished Visitors, lecturers, staff, and other guests. The library does not monitor the print publishing market. All patrons of the HAC Library may submit purchase suggestions to the Library Manager through their personal library account in the local library system Koha. No purchase suggestions are designated by external parties. The library pursues users’ demand-driven acquisitions for the research made at the Academy.

Reader privileges:

All internal readers may request materials for in-house consultation, order books from public libraries, and submit acquisition proposals to the library manager. The library pursues users’ demand-driven acquisitions. 

Circulation:

Materials do not circulate outside of the American Academy in Berlin and may be ordered in the local library system Koha. Books borrowed from external libraries may not be delivered or taken beyond the fellowship stay or work at the American Academy in Berlin and must be returned on time.

Frequently Asked Questions

The library in the Hans Arnhold Center was designed as a reference library for our fellowship program, focusing on the interests of English-speaking scholars. The following Patron Categories are entitled to borrow media from the holdings of the AAB: Fellows and Distinguished Visitors and their partners and family members; Management and Staff; External persons, partner libraries, and partner institutions of the AAB within scope of outgoing interlibrary loan. The American Academy in Berlin reserves the right to limit or to deny access to the external users.

Please address all archive requests to Ilya Oehring, Manager, Library Services, HAC Library and Archive (contact below), and include a short project description.  We are still working on the cataloging solution for archived items.

The American Academy in Berlin offers  a wide  range  of  library  services, so you  do not have to ship your own materials to Berlin. The Academy also has special lending terms with  partner  libraries  in Berlin, which  means that  you  may  hold onto your  borrowed  books  and  reference materials  for  the duration of your stay at the Academy.

All  books  will  be  delivered  to  your personal bookshelf  at  the  Hans  Arnhold  Center.  You will be notified per email when your books are ready for pick up.

Yes, fellows may send along their full project bibliographies in advance, so that the Academy’s library service can obtain requested materials prior to the fellow’s arrival. For that, (1) please register in our local system Koha, and (2) order your bibliography using the request form “interlibrary loan requests” in your personal Koha account.

The HAC Library offers a wide range of the liaison librarian services:

  • Full-time librarian availability for the research support of Academy projects
  • Participation of the library staff in meetings with the fellows
  • Literature reviews, overviews of the key academic texts and companions on the specific topics of the fellow’s research area
  • Research support in finding relevant archives and collections in Berlin and Germany
  • Support in organizing archive and library visits as well as accompanying the fellows, if necessary
  • Participation in discipline-specific organizations and associations in order to develop new library services and to offer the fellows contacts to the subjects specialists in the Berlin library landscape
  • Facilitating problem solving in relation to library services and access to the German research infrastructure

Yes, the Academy assists in integrating Berlin’s rich academic landscape into your research. The capital of Germany not only has several large state and public archives, it also has numerous societies, foundations, and associations with their own private collections and specific archives. At the start of the residency, fellows will receive a list of archive overviews and contacts. To make an appointment to visit an archive, please speak with library services manager Ilya Oehring (contact below) to facilitate the appointment and visit. Should the fellow request assistance in getting to and navigating the archive, the Academy will arrange accompaniment from a library assistant or other staff member.

Unfortunately, the Academy does not have subscriptions for digital dictionaries or online reference resources. If fellows are unable to remotely access the online services of their home university, the Academy’s library service can help you to register at the Berlin state library after your arrival so you can access proprietary online resources that way. Registration and access to online resources are both free of charge.

Yes. If fellows wish to study music scores for their private practice, concert preparations, or other purposes, the library service can borrow sheet music from the public libraries in Berlin.

The Academy’s library team provides a document-delivery service for residential fellows and Distinguished Visitors. Books are normally delivered within three days, depending on the complexity of research and access to materials. Books not obtainable from Berlin libraries can be ordered via inter-library loan and will arrive within two to three weeks (express delivery within 72 hrs). The Academy also offers its fellows research guidelines to facilitate navigation of the rich landscape of libraries and archives in Berlin, with a particular focus on non-lending libraries and state archives. The Academy’s librarian also assists fellows with research questions and preparing visits to archives.

To support fellows’ research, the below links lead to major research databases, encyclopedias and dictionaries, digital libraries, bibliographical and biographical databases, and museum archives that offer open-access document retrieval, primarily from digital collections in the fields of arts and humanities in English and German.

Contact the Librarian

Ilya Oehring

Manager, Library Service
Hans Arnhold Center Library & Archive

ip@americanacademy.de
+49 (30) 804 83 133

Books Written at the American Academy in Berlin

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