Library card

The use of the ULB is basically free of charge. Information areas and reading rooms are freely accessible. However, you will need a library card for all borrowing procedures.

The ULB library card is valid for the Central Library as well as for other libraries of the University of Münster, in particular for the Medical Library, the Social Sciences Branch Library, the Centre for Dutch Studies / Branch Library and the library of the Institute of Educational Science and Communication Science. If you have logged in to KatalogPlus, you will see which holdings can be borrowed with your ULB library card and which cannot.

• Registration
• Library account – login
• Borrowing conditions
• Change of personal details
• Lost library cards
• Period of validity

Registration – How to obtain your library card

The ULB library card is free of charge. You can apply for your library card online from home or in person at the registration desk. If you are a student at the University of Münster, your student ID card is also your library card. When you receive your student ID card, you will just need to activate your library account.

For students of the University of Münster

You will find your personal ULB user number printed on the back of the student ID card – in plain text and codified as a barcode. For security reasons, however, the ULB user number is not yet valid at the time the card is sent by the Student Admissions Office, but must be activated once online. And this is how it works:
Call up the online registration and log in with your university ID. Then enter your ULB user number. Once the necessary data has been submitted, your student ID card will be automatically activated for the ULB in a few moments.

For all other persons

• Online registration from home:
  With the online registration, you can transmit all required personal details and documents electronically to the ULB in just a few steps. We will either send you your library card by post or you can collect it from the ULB at the registration desk.
• In-person registration in the library:
  You can register in person at the registration desk of the ULB. As a rule, you will receive your library card immediately here after filling in an electronic registration form. The service hours of the registration desk in the ground floor reading room of the Central Library, in the Medical Library and in the Social Sciences Branch Library can be found in the respective overview of the opening hours.
  For the registration, you always need your identity card or passport. If you live in Germany or the Netherlands and your passport does not contain an address, you will also need an official registration certificate stating your place of residence.

Special regulations

• For academic staff of the University of Münster, special loan conditions apply (longer loan periods, automatic renewal, free interlibrary loan – invoicing via your institute – as well as delivery for very decentrally located Münster University institutes via internal post). For these special conditions to be granted, proof is required that you belong to the academic staff of the University of Münster. In many cases, we can check this automatically; however, if this is not possible, we require appropriate proof from the University (employment contract or document of appointment), which you can submit later if required. During online registration, you will be shown whether or not we can automatically verify your status. If you prefer to register in person at the registration desk, please feel free to ask us about it there.
  The special conditions for academic staff of the University of Münster are also granted to persons who are academically active for the University of Münster to a significant extent, even if the University of Münster has not signed a corresponding employment contract with this person. This applies, for example, to many private lecturers, guest researchers or project staff after the end of a project. If you belong to this group of people, have your institute certify this using the form Confirmation of scientist status and then submit this certificate to the ULB.
• In addition, minors require a declaration of consent from a parent or legal guardian as well as their identity card or passport or a photocopy of it. Minors under 16 years of age are not permitted to use the ULB, with the exception of junior students at the University of Münster and pupils participating in the funding programme of the International Centre for the Study of Giftedness (ICBF) of the University of Münster.
• In order to apply for a library card, the heads of projects at the University of Münster need to complete the conventional registration form "Projects".
• In exceptional cases, you may appoint another person to apply for and collect your library card. For this purpose, the person appointed by you must, in addition to the above-mentioned documents, present a written authority and identify themselves by means of an identity card or passport.

Your library account – login details

Members of Münster University received a university ID from the CIT.

All other persons receive a login ID from the ULB upon registration. It is valid as long as the library card. If you have forgotten the password that goes with it, please contact the registration desk staff in person.

University ID / login ID and password are the key to your library account, accessible via KatalogPlus (top right; the login ID is also entered in the field for the university ID). You will also need them to request items via KatalogPlus and to place requests for interlibrary loans. If you do not know which ID you can log in with, please find out via the service My Login ID.

The user number on the back of your library card, consisting of 11 characters in the format A12345678/Z, is relevant for some ULB services as well.

Borrowing conditions

The borrowing of media from the ULB is basically free of charge. You will only be charged for the matters listed in the fee schedule, such as exceeding the loan period or for individual services such as interlibrary loan requests.

Different borrowing conditions apply to the different user groups of the ULB (number of borrowable media, renewal options, etc.). The initial letter of your user number indicates the user group to which you belong; for example, the letter "A" represents students of the University of Münster. A separate overview informs you of the borrowing conditions that apply to your user group.

Change of personal details

Via KatalogPlus in your library account you can check your user details at any time and make sure that they are correct. Please inform us as soon as possible of any changes to your personal details:

• Students should report any changes in name and address to the Student Admissions Office (Studierendensekretariat). Please use the SelfService for this purpose. The Student Admissions Office will pass these changes on to the ULB. It is not necessary to send an additional message to the ULB.
• All other users must notify the ULB in person of any change in name or address at the registration desk. Please bring along your library card as well as your identity card or passport and your registration certificate. If you are unable to notify us of the change on site, please contact us by email (ulb@uni-muenster.de); we will then let you know individually which documents we need from you as proof of the change and how you can send them to us securely.

Lost library cards

Blocking

If your student ID card / library card is lost or stolen, you should block it for borrowing immediately. The blocking only applies to using the card, you can still log in to your library account. You will be liable for any misuse of your lost and unblocked card.
Students please note that the blocking of the student ID card mentioned here only affects the borrowing options at the ULB. All other functions of your student ID card are not affected by this blocking, in particular your credit on the card. Please contact the Student Admissions Office about this.

Should you recover / retrieve the card, you can simply unblock it.

Replacement

• Student ID card: For students of the University of Münster, a replacement student ID card can only be issued by the Student Admissions Office (Studierendensekretariat) and costs 15 Euros. Your replacement card needs to be activated again for the ULB for you to be able to use it as a library card (see above).
• Library card: For the second issue of a library card (not for students of the University of Münster) by the ULB, a fee of 10 Euros will be charged according to the fee schedule. Please pay careful attention to your library card and protect it from damage.

Period of validity

• The student ID card of the University of Münster is valid as ULB library card until the end of the semester in which you de-register.
  If you receive a replacement student ID card from the Student Admissions Office, your previous card will be blocked for use in the ULB eight weeks later; after this period, only the newly issued student ID card – once again activated – will be valid.
  If you would like to continue to use the ULB after graduation, please ask for a library card for external users.
• The library cards of the academic university staff are valid up to a maximum of six months after they leave the university.
• For data protection reasons, library cards will be deleted if they have not been used for three years and there are no justifiable reasons under data protection law for the continued storage of data.