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Specialised Library for Complementary Medicine (FBK)

Project overview

Specialised libraries represent a particular niche within the library community. Their collections focus on just one specialised area to support a specific user base. The "Specialised Library for Complementary Medicine" (FBK) is a special library of the Chair of Medical Theory, Integrative and Anthroposophic Medicine and was established in a project (Prof. Dr. Peter Matthiessen) as an integrated reference system for scientific literature in the field of complementary medicine from 2000 to 2005. Initially, the FBK was located on the premises of the Witten/Herdecke University Library as a co-operation project with the Herdecke Community Hospital. For space reasons, the library was relocated to the stacks of the university library in Witten in a comprehensive process. Since 2023, the former reference library has been integrated into the university's lending and interlibrary loan system. Statistics document the lending process. More than 3,000 monographs from the years 1886 to approx. 2018 on complementary medicine are available from the fields of

Anthroposophic medicine, homeopathy, reflex therapies, spirituality, music therapy, physical therapy, osteopathy, phytotherapy, herbal medicine and monastic medicine, naturopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture and others.

The book collection can be searched via the university catalogue and can be identified by the shelfmark FBK (Fachbibliothek Komplementärmedizin).

CAMbase database

The CAMbase database developed in connection with the above-mentioned project contains more than 113,490 bibliographic data records on complementary medicine, which can be searched online free of charge. These are scientific titles, some with abstracts. So-called "grey literature" is also bibliographically located here (unpublished documents, conference reports, scientific articles in pre-publication and unpublished Bachelor's or Master's theses, as well as PhD theses). With the help of a modern, Solr-based retrieval technique, searching the database is also easy for users who are not used to dealing with database queries in a professional sense.

Further information

  • Responsible: Chair of Medical Theory, Integrative and Anthroposophic Medicine
  • Funding: The specialised library and the accompanying CAMbase database were formerly funded by the Karl and Veronica Carstens Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Education and Family Affairs (BMBF) and the German Research Foundation (DFG) under the name "OPEN-CAM".

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