What does <intR>² stand for?
<intR>² stands for: International and Interdisciplinary Legal Research.
What is the Virtual Library <intR>²?
The Virtual Library <intR>² is the central digital service platform of the Specialized Information Service for International and Interdisciplinary Legal Research.
The Specialized Information Service for International and Interdisciplinary Legal Research is a service infrastructure funded by the German Research Foundation and located at the Berlin State Library.
In the Virtual Library <intR>² you will find extensive supra-regional, digital and free services that cover the special needs of legal researchers in the field of international and interdisciplinary legal research that go beyond the basic needs.
How can I find the Virtual Library <intR>²?
You can access the Virtual Library <intR>² at this URL: https://vifa-recht.de/en/.
Is registration required to use the Virtual Library <intR>²?
The Virtual Library <intR>² is generally freely accessible.
Registration is only required for the services Virtual Reading Room and Individualised Direct Loan.
How can I register for the Virtual Reading Room?
Holders of full professorships in law at universities and colleges in Germany as well as their academic mid-level staff (not student assistants, students or external doctoral candidates) can register to use the Virtual Reading Room. For licensing reasons, registration can only be done in person. Please use the form for initial registration. It is not possible to register entire teams of chairs or institutes.
What digital content is available in the Virtual Reading Room?
The list of all digital content can be found on the home page of the Virtual Reading Room.
Can I also access databases of the Berlin State Libary in the Virtual Reading Room?
No. Even though the Specialized Information Service for International and Interdisciplinary Legal Research is located at the Berlin State Libary, the database offerings of the two institutions are independent of each other. Therefore, a separate personal registration is required to use the local databases licensed by the Berlin State Libary, which you can also do online.
What does Individualised Direct Loan enable?
The Individualised Direct Loan enables authorized persons to borrow special scientific literature from the holdings of the Berlin State Libary directly from the Specialized Information Service – i.e. without going through another library – at exclusive special conditions.
This service is used exclusively to send titles from all areas of international and interdisciplinary legal research that are not accessible to the authorized group of persons on site.
Holders of full professorships in law at universities and colleges in Germany can register to use the Individualised Direct Loan. Those registered for Individualised Direct Loan are automatically also activated for the Virtual Reading Room. Information on registration can be found here: Individualised Direct Loan.
Why are certain databases such as beck-online, juris, HeinOnline, Westlaw, etc. not available in the Virtual Reading Room?
The Virtual Reading Room's resources reflect the current special needs of researchers in the field of international and interdisciplinary legal research – the resources licensed for this purpose are otherwise hardly or not available in Germany.
Databases such as HeinOnline and Westlaw are now frequently licensed at German academic university libraries and are therefore not recognized or funded by the German Research Foundation as a resource of peak demand. Although the Berlin State Libary, where the Specialized Information Service for International and Interdisciplinary Legal Research is located, also has a local license for the databases HeinOnline and Westlaw, only users who have registered personally at the Berlin State Libary have access to them (including remote access).
