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Librario & Citavi

The project ends. The knowledge stays.

Citavi accompanies one person through their project. When the project ends, the Citavi project file sits on a drive — and the knowledge in it is barely reachable for the team. Librario is the company library beneath: the shared collection that stays.

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Two tools

Two tools, two jobs

Citavi and Librario are not competitors — they solve different jobs.

Citavi

What Citavi does

The personal reference and knowledge manager. Citavi is strong where one person drives their project forward.

  • Collect sources for a piece of research and cite them in Word
  • Structure quotes, thoughts and categories per project
  • Organise your own research for one undertaking
Librario

What Librario does

The company library. Librario is strong where an organisation holds its collection over years.

  • The shared, curated collection — for everyone, across projects and years
  • Lending and physical copies, member and permission management
  • Collections that belong to a team — not to one individual

The bridge

From the company collection into your Citavi project

A collection in Librario — a curated set on a subject area, say — exports in one step as a BibTeX or EndNote file. Citavi reads both formats. So every new project starts with the company's vetted holdings instead of from scratch.

And because Librario exports both BibTeX and EndNote, your collection stays independent of which reference manager a person prefers — Citavi, Zotero or EndNote. The library does not tie itself to any single reference-manager vendor.

What Librario adds as an institution

What a project file cannot do

01 · COLLECTIONS

Knowledge that belongs to the team

A collection in Librario belongs to the company, not to a person. When someone leaves the team, the collection stays — and every source in it.

02 · AI RESEARCH

The MCP server

An AI assistant searches the company collection directly — secured, tenant-separated, with the same permissions as the web interface.

03 · IT STAYS

The collection outlives staff changes

Publications, metadata and attached PDFs stay in the company collection — no matter who created them or who has left the company.

Honestly

What Librario is not

Librario does not replace Citavi. Citing in Word, project-based knowledge organisation, writing the paper — that remains the reference manager's job.

How your literature gets into Librario

Librario does not ship a ready-made file import for .bib or .enw — but it offers two flexible paths. For everyday cataloguing, Librario detects metadata automatically from uploaded PDFs and via identifiers such as ISBN, DOI or arXiv ID. For a migration or a recurring sync, use the REST API: your IT builds exactly the importer your workflow needs — from BibTeX, from an Excel sheet, or from your previous system.

Frequently asked questions

Do we have to drop Citavi if we adopt Librario?
No. Citavi stays your staff's personal reference manager. Librario is the company library beneath it — the two have different jobs and work together through the export.
Does our existing literature from Citavi come into Librario?
Librario has no ready-made .bib or .enw file import. Existing literature comes in via automatic metadata detection from PDFs and via identifiers (ISBN, DOI, arXiv ID) — and via the REST API, which lets your IT script an importer for any source, e.g. from BibTeX or an Excel sheet.
Does Librario meet our IT-security and data-protection requirements?
Librario runs in data centres in the EU, is GDPR-compliant and supports single sign-on via Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Entra ID). A data processing agreement (DPA) is in place; the Trust Center holds the DPA with the technical and organisational measures and the list of sub-processors.
Can we still evidence our sources years later?
Yes. A publication with its metadata and attached PDF stays in the company collection — no matter who created it or who has left the company. A collection belongs to the company, not to one individual.
Do we own our holdings — can we get out again?
Yes. You export your metadata at any time, in one click, as BibTeX, EndNote or CSV. Your holdings are yours — regardless of what happens with Librario.

More from Librario

Features that keep the collection alive

Automated cataloguing

Enter an ISBN, DOI or arXiv ID — Librario fetches the title, authors and metadata automatically.

Full-text search

Search the whole collection — right into the text of attached PDFs.

Usability

If you can use Word, you can use Librario — no training needed.

Bring your company's literature into one searchable place.

Start free, build a first collection and export it for Citavi.

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