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»Libraries are not Dispensable Luxuries« / Germany’s President Horst Köhler Pays Tribute to Librarianship and Appeals for More Support (pp. 49) On Germany’s Library Day, October 24, 2007, the newly renovated Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar celebrated its re-opening only three years after a tragic fire. In his opening speech President Horst Köhler used the occasion to appeal for a stronger networking of libraries in Germany. The German’s head of state challenged the national government, the federal states and municipalities to re-consider their financial support of public libraries. He stressed that »libraries need to be put on today’s political agendas«. Public libraries are neither a dispensable luxury nor a »burden of the past which we are still dragging along. They are an endowment which we must try to make the most of«, he said. Unlike those countries which ranked highest in the PISA education study, the libraries in Germany lack a strategic anchoring in the educational infrastructure. The necessary objective targets are missing both at the federal and the state level. Furthermore »day-to-day librarianship« is in actual danger of perishing altogether in some regions of Germany; universities often lack the financial means for new acquisitions; in many older libraries there are inadequate fire prevention measures; there is an urgent need for advances in paper preservation. In view of all these deficits, he hopes to see a political course correction, said the president. Horst Köhler’s speech was widely reported in the media and awakened interest not only among librarians and their professional organizations. In the eastern state of Thuringia, plans to implement a library law passed the first parliamentary step toward enactment only a few days after his speech. So it seems that Germany’s first library law could soon become reality – and a model for other federal states. Farewell to the Self-Deception of a »Library for Everyone« / Educational Poverty, Loss of Mobility, Multi-Culti Society: The Future Requires Completely New Strategies (Meinhard Motzko) (pp. 50–55) According to the critical analysis of the Bremen sociologist Meinhard Motzko, public libraries are ignoring the reality of their society by trying to appeal first of all to the educated, bourgeois middle-class. Social researchers have long identified new social strata and divided social groups into, for example, »modern performers«, »traditionally rooted«, and »consumption materialists«. It is time for librarians to draw upon such analytical models. At the same time, demographics show that the population is getting older, more multicultural and declining. Librarians can no longer ignore these facts if they hope to ensure their own future. By drawing the proper consequences, there need to be some unusual decisions taken, such as in personnel selection. To put it bluntly, the tattooed librarian with tongue-piercing has more rapport with teenagers and the Turkish-German librarian knows better how to promote reading among his fellow citizens of Turkish ancestry. And any »traditionally rooted« person might well prefer to attend an evening of folk music than a modern poetry reading. The claim of public libraries to be there »for everyone« is self-deception, according to Motzko. It is especially the problem groups that are in need of reading and education but are hardly being addressed by the library. New schemes need to be developed, preferably in conjunction with other institutions, such as schools and neighborhood centers.
Moving Around the Library at the Click of What do the users of tomorrow want from their public libraries? Recent analyses such as the online studies undertaken by German public television stations (ARD and ZDF) have shown that today’s 13- to 20-year-olds prefer quite different kinds of media than the youth of only a few years ago. Weblogs, game consoles, and internet portals such as YouTube have led to significant changes in media usage patterns.
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