Abstract

The Federal Institute of Sports Science (BISp, www.bisp.de), which was founded in 1970, makes use of and supports the available research capacities at the universities, particularly the sports-related sciences in the Federal Republic of Germany, to assist elite sport and elite athletes in delivering top performances. Through the project-related and application-oriented promotion of scientific research, scientific counselling and knowledge transfer both in sports practice and sports science, BISp provides effective support to elite sport. Always under the premise of humane performance sport, BISp has had a considerable influence on the development of sports science, including sports medicine, and has acquired a strong national and international reputation. BISp consists of three departments: Department I – Research and Development; Department II – Scientific Counselling; Department III – Policy and Controlling. The primary task of Department II is the documentation and distribution of sports-science findings and results. The core of the information processing are the three databases run by BISp: SPOLIT, SPOFOR, SPOMEDIA (literature, research and media documentation) as well as the Specialist Sports Information Guide (quality-secured internet sources). SPOLIT currently includes approximately 190,000 articles and books. The search results are so-called literature documents that include bibliographic data and an abstract, which is very often in English. Readers who are interested in the full text of a literature document can order the respective article using the Subito document delivery service. Verf.-Referat