The EZB is a huge directory of electronic journals which mirrors the central Max Planck Society subscriptions as well as the local licensing situation of the institutes. Access rights to the contents of the individual journals are indicated with "traffic lights". Entries are searchable on journal level.

Throughout Europe, national patent offices and the European Patent Office (EPO) offer free patent information on the Internet Patents reveal solutions to technical problems, and they represent an inexhaustable source of information: more than 80 percent of man's technical knowledge is described in patent literature. From the middle of 1998 onwards, esp@cenet users have been able to access the bibliographic data of all patents published in the preceding two years by any member state of the European Patent Organisation, as well as by the European Patent Office and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). In addition, full-page facsimile images of documents are also retrievable to facilitate more detailed analysis of these documents. The data for this particular service is stored at the relevant national office.

The Max Planck Journal Index provides holdings of a great range of printed journals available within the Max Planck Society. Besides, it contains metadata of electronic journals as loaded from the EZB. The database is updated regularly from the ZDB (twice a year) and the EZB (monthly).

A collaborative effort of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), OCLC, VTLS, and Scirus, the NDLTD Union Catalog contains more than one million records of electronic theses and dissertations. For students and researchers, the Union Catalog makes individual collections of NDLTD member institutions and consortia appear as one seamless digital library of electronic theses and dissertations.

Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works. Founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Project Gutenberg's mission is "To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks".

The ZDB is the world’s largest specialized database for serial titles (journals, annuals, newspapers etc., incl. e-journals). The ZDB contains more than 1 million bibliographic records of serials from the 16th century onwards, from all countries, in all languages, held in 4000 German (and some foreign) libraries, with holdings information. It does not index individual journal articles.