With the funding format "Fachinformationsdienste für die Wissenschaft (FID)" ("Specialised Information Services for Science"), the German Research Foundation DFG aimed to further develop the established system of supra-regional scientific literature provision. The structural changes in both the scientific publication market and research processes in the digital age have necessitated a fundamental revision of the special subject collection system. As a result of a multi-stage evaluation, the German Research Foundation abandoned its acquisition guidelines aimed at building comprehensive collections with effect from 1 January 2014 in favour of a dedicated focus of library services on the specific demand and current information needs of the respective academic community. This process goes hand in hand not only with the renaming of the former "Sondersammelgebiete" ("special subject collections") as FID, but also with the integration of the funding model, which was previously geared towards the creation of permanent structures, into the regular funding procedures of the German Research Foundation. Due to their project form, the specialised information services have to prove their efficiency in the service of research every three years.
In the course of staggered application procedures, the previous special subject collections of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin have therefore also been successively converted into discipline-specific specialised information services (FID), whose activities are strictly demand-oriented and geared to the current information needs of researchers.
Since 1949, an effective form of cooperation had been established between academic libraries to build up highly specialised literature holdings: Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), libraries were responsible for the collection and maintenance of literature in one or more specialised fields.
The decisive factor for assigning a special subject collection to a library was, among other things, that the institution had a particularly high level of expertise in this subject area. The literature acquired with funds from the DFG as well as the special subject collections' own funds was and is available to cutting-edge research nationwide through interlibrary loans, document delivery or access to electronic sources.
In the period 2013-2015, the subject-specific and regionally oriented special collections were transferred to the new funding programme "Fachinformationsdienste für die Wissenschaft" ("Specialised Information Services for Science").
The material-related focal points of the collection will continue to be supported by the State Library with its own funds:
