Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

• How do I log in to use my account functions?
• How do I get my password for the library account?
• How is the result list sorted? Can the sort order be changed?
• What does the "relevance" option mean when sorting the result list?
• According to which criteria is the facet "suggested topics" formed?
• In the detail display, "Similar entries" appear in the column on the right. How is this selection made?
• How does the export to literature management programs work?

How do I log in to use my account functions?

Click the “Library Account” button in the top right corner. A login window will open.

Enter your username in the format firstname.lastname (do not replace umlauts) and your password, then click “Library Account”.

How do I get my password for the library account?

Library accounts are only available to staff of the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB).

If you do not yet have a password or need a new one, you will find all the necessary information on our intranet pages.

How is the result list sorted? Can the sort order be changed?

The default is to sort the results by year of publication in chronologically descending order. Thus, current publications appear at the top of the result list.

Using the Sort drop-down menu, you can change the sorting of results according to your needs - e.g. by relevance, author, alphabetically by title or by year of publication in ascending order.

What does the "relevance" option mean when sorting the result list?

Generally, the relevance depends on the frequency of the search terms in certain fields in relation to the total number of documents. When searching across "all fields", additional criteria can be defined which influence the relevance and thus the ranking in the list of results. For example, when calculating the value of relevance, certain fields can be weighted more strongly than others. In BIBB's literature search, the categories "title" and "keyword" are particularly highly weighted.

According to which criteria is the facet "suggested subjects" formed?

The starting point for the keywords displayed here is the number of results. These are analysed and the keywords found are displayed in an order of frequency.

In the detail display, "Similar items" appear in the column on the right. How is this selection made?

In the detail display five further entries from the selected data collection ("Entire collection", "VET Repository", "Library catalogue") are shown in the column on the right. Mathematical methods are used to find titles that are as similar as possible to the displayed title.

The following factors are taken into account in the calculation:

• • Total number of documents in the system
• • Number of documents in which the search term(s) occur(s)
• • Frequency of the term being mentioned in the specific document
• • Number of the most frequent term in the specific document
• • Inverse document frequency of the term, whereby the number of documents in which the term occurs is set in relation to the frequency of occurrence in a specific document (terms that occur frequently or in almost every document are rated as less relevant than those that occur frequently in only a few documents).

How does the export to reference management software work?

You have the possibility to export single results as well as several results at the same time. To export several results simultaneously, you must first add them to the "Book Bag" (clipboard).

1. Mark the titles you want to export. If you only want to export individual titles, click in the box to the left of the individual results. If you want to export all results of the respective search page, click in the box "Select page" in the section "Result Selection" above or below the result list.


2. Now click under "Result Selection" on the grey button "Add to Book Bag". You will receive a message telling you that the selected data records have been copied to the clipboard.


3. You now have the option of continuing your search and collecting all relevant results in the clipboard.


4. If you now want to export your collected results, switch to the clipboard by clicking on the link "xy items" in the upper right corner.


5. Your clipboard opens. Check the box "Select page" in the upper left corner and then click on the "Export" button.


6. An "Export favourites" window will then open. Please select the desired export format from the list. If you use EndNote, please select "EndNote" accordingly and then click on the "Export" button.


7. The download manager will then open and you can open the file directly in your reference management software after saving it.

Individual results can be exported more quickly via the detail display. Simply click on the grey "Export Record" button under "Result Selection" above. You can now directly select the desired export format.