Usage Policy

Borrowing books:

Remove the white library card from the book, fill in the date, your name and if it is not obvious how to contact you, please leave a telephone number and room number. Place the card in the bookshelf at the original position of the book. Make sure that the card is well visible.

If there is no card in the book, please take a blank card (there is a box with new library cards at the right side of the bookshelf in NC 03/54) and fill in the names of the authors, the book title and the book ID as well. Then put the card at the original position of the book.

Please be considerate! Someone else might desperately need the book that you have just taken. Please keep books only as long as it is really necessary. In particular you should give others a chance to have a look at the books. Most of the time a book was bought to serve a special need, and there may be someone else needing it. Please keep all books here at the University in your office at a visible place so that they can be retrieved easily in case of an “emergency”. Please don't take books home (also not over the weekend), to conferences or with you on vacation!

If you take a book that has officially been borrowed by another user, change the name on the card accordingly so that others know the current position of the book. Experience tells us, that having “just a brief look” at the book is THE main reason for missing books, because the official borrower often does not remember who took a book weeks or months later.

To avoid the (unintentional) build-up of “private libraries” in the offices please return regularly all books to the library at the end of each semester.

Returning books:

Take the card from the bookshelf, cross out your name and put the card back into the book. If you don't cross out your name and someone else takes the book without entering his name on the card, you will be taken as the borrower (and be held responsible for the whereabouts of that book). If you cannot find the card, write a new one AND contact the person in charge of the library to make a note in case the original card with your name on it reappears later.

Please make sure that the book is put in the right position. This also includes the right position with respect to the library cards of borrowed books. In the past it regularly happened that library cards started to “migrate” along the shelves, because they simply have been moved aside to return books. A missing card is as bad as a missing book, because nobody will know where the book is!

Information for non-members of the Lehrstuhl:

Non-members can borrow books on paying a deposit of Euro 50 (irrespective of the book) in the office as security which will be paid back on return of the book undamaged after one week. Please contact the Theochem office (Secretariat des Lehrstuhl, room NBCF 03/295); please do not borrow books via members, thanks!