🎧 01 - The Foyer

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Track 1 - The Foyer

Welcome to the University of Giessen main library.

You are presently at the first of eight audio stations which you can listen to one after another or in random order as you tour the library. The university's main library, abbreviated as UB in German, is the largest library of the University of Giessen. In addition to the University Library, there are numerous branch and subject-specific libraries which assure the literature supply of the university.

The UB offers you a wide spectrum of specialist literature: It is the main library of the Humanities. Also available here, amongst others, are portions of the literature for physical education, psychology and law. During your tour of the library you will learn where to find what on the library's three floors.

You are currently in the foyer. Perhaps you are lucky and have arrived here early in the morning, late in the evening, or on the weekend and it is a little bit quieter. Or perhaps you are standing in the middle of a clamour of students who are hanging up their jackets, carrying heavy piles of books, or are in the centre of the foyer researching on the computers. These research stations are of utmost importance: only through the library's electronic catalogue can you discover where a book or journal is found. You will learn how to quickly and accurately use this database, how to access it with your laptop, and much more in the “Finding Literature”-track, the eighth audio station in this series.

For now, back to the foyer. If you enter the library through the main entrance and walk to the staircase, you’ll find the information desk on your right. Here you can ask questions of any kind. You will also find help with your search for literature. On the big screen you can browse through our virtual textbook collection to search for important textbooks for your subject.

The staircase in the middle leads you to our reading rooms on the second and third floors. There, freely accessible and organized by subject, you will find approximately 400.000 volumes available to be borrowed or used on site. For the protection of the materials eating is not allowed in these areas, however, you may bring your water bottle with you. So that you don’t have to step on jackets and bags, you can safely store your valuables in one of the numerous lockers on the ground floor. You can find the lockers to the right of the main entrance, as well as on the way to the cafeteria and the exhibition room. To use the lockers you merely need your chip card. If you are not a student at the Justus Liebig University and don’t own a chip card, there are coin-operated lockers available for you. In order to use them you need a 2 Euro coin.

Starting at the information desk, if you pass the security gates, on the opposite side of the foyer is a computer room, also known as the CLUB. There, between classes, students quietly work, research, or prepare for upcoming courses. Situated in the back area of the CLUB is the university library’s education room. In front of the CLUB you can find three machines. The right one is our automated pay station. Here you can cashless pay reminder fees or purchase vouchers for interlibrary loans or other purposes in the integrated shop. You will learn more about interlibrary loans in track 9. At the other two machines you can purchase copy cards or deposit funds to your chip cards for making copies or printing. Copy machines are available on each floor.

To the right of the CLUB, once you passed the security gates, you can find the circulation desk. Now, for information concerning borrowing, please select track 2. Or, if you are searching for a specific book and would first like to know where it is found, please select track 8.