About eLibrary 
Easy registration for Individual User accounts for saving, exporting,
and sharing Search History and Favorites Customized new content alerts
and RSS feeds based on user preferences
eLibrary Overview
Please view our eLibrary Overview PowerPoint presentation to learn about the many features and useful tools eLibrary offers researchers. This presentation may be downloaded for training purposes as well.Frequently Asked Questions
What is the World Bank eLibrary?
The World Bank eLibrary is the World Bank’s subscription-based collection of nearly 6,000 books, reports, journals, and working papers including:- Development Outreach, World Bank Economic Review and World Bank Research Observer journal articles published since 1996
- Development Economics (DEC) policy research working papers published since 1995
- e-books and reports dating as far as the 1970’s (in the case of the World Development Reports), plus
- all new formal publications upon release.
How is eLibrary different than content on the Bank’s main website?
Among the many differences between accessing World Bank publications in eLibrary vs. the Bank’s main web site is that eLibrary contains only the final, peer-reviewed versions of the Bank’s formal publications.
eLibrary is designed to meet the needs of the library, academic and
research community. Its value lies in the quality and convenience of
its publications database. Each article, book, and working paper is
enriched with semantic and bibliographic metadata, including topics,
regions, countries, abstracts and keywords using a controlled
vocabulary. Users save time with Quick and Advanced search options that
narrow searches across and within World Bank publications and return
highly relevant results across all content types.
In addition, eLibrary offers a number of other useful research tools and features including:
- Browse by content type, topic, key word, series, and other metadata
- Search within Search Results
- Chapter-level abstracts and individual chapter downloads for a growing number of books
- One-click social bookmarking icons for sharing pages and abstracts as well as search and browse results
- Athens and Shibboleth authentication
- COUNTER compliant usage statistics including usage by content type
- Downloadable metadata records for easier cataloging
Users within a subscribing institution may register for their own
individual account, allowing them to save, modify, search within, email,
export and print and set up alerts when new content matches their
search results. Search History is accessible during each user session.
All content may be viewed online and downloaded free of DRM (with the exception of a watermark).
eLibrary is available by subscription and access is via IP authentication.
Why don’t I see the pdf symbol for some documents?
If you are not a subscriber, you are permitted to search, view, and
download all free publications within eLibrary. However, paid content
is only available by subscription, so the pdfs will not appear for those
publications. Non-subscribers may, however, purchase and download any
premium content with perpetual access rights.
The World Bank Regions
Countries and Regions are classified within eLibrary according to the World Bank’s Administrative Regions. For more information visit the World Bank’s Countries and Regions on the Bank’s main website.
World Bank research and publication topics:
- Agriculture
- Communities& Human Settlements
- Conflict and Development
- Education
- Energy
- Environment
- Finance and Financial Sector Development
- Gender
- Governance
- Health, Nutrition and Population
- Industry
- Information and Communication Technologies
- Infrastructure Economics and Finance
- International Economics & Trade
- Law and Development
- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth
- Poverty Reduction
- Private Sector Development
- Public Sector Development
- Rural Development
- Science and Technology Development
- Social Development
- Social Protection and Labor
- Transport
- Urban Development
- Water Resources
- Water Supply and Sanitation
- World Bank
