German Academic Libraries Research Articles

Comparing different search methods for the open access journal recommendation tool B!SON

Finding a suitable open access journal to publish academic work is a complex task: Researchers have to navigate a constantly growing number of journals, institutional agreements with publishers, funders’ conditions and the risk of predatory publishers. To help with these challenges, we introduce a web-based journal recommendation system called B!SON. A systematic requirements analysis was conducted in the form of a survey. The developed tool suggests open access journals based on title, abstract and references provided by the user. The recommendations are built on open data, publisher-independent and work across domains and languages. Transparency is provided by its open source nature, an open application programming interface (API) and by specifying which matches the shown recommendations are based on. The recommendation quality has been evaluated using two different evaluation techniques, including several new recommendation methods. We were able to improve the results from our previous paper with a pre-trained transformer model. The beta version of the tool received positive feedback from the community and in several test sessions. We developed a recommendation system for open access journals to help researchers find a suitable journal. The open tool has been extensively tested, and we found possible improvements for our current recommendation technique. Development by two German academic libraries ensures the longevity and sustainability of the system.

Promoting data sharing by improving data information literacy in German academic libraries

Promoting data sharing by improving data information literacy in German academic libraries

Report on Learning Spaces in German Academic Libraries

Report on Learning Spaces in German Academic Libraries

Internationalization in German Academic Libraries: Moving beyond North American Perspectives

This paper explores how internationalization is understood and experienced in German academic libraries. Its main purpose is to move the discussion of internationalization in academic libraries beyond the boundaries of English-speaking North America by investigating a European perspective. Its secondary purpose is to investigate the role of English in German academic libraries. An online survey and a series of in-person interviews conducted in Germany in April 2015 provided the data for this study. What emerged are a series of stated differences and similarities between North America and Germany informed by the two overarching themes of implicit internationalization and plurilingualism, the ability to switch from one language to another as required.

Europäische Förderprogramme für wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken

In the early 1990s the European Commission initiated the first »Telematics for Libraries program«. Today these library subsidy programs are integrated into a largerframework of programs for research, education, culture and Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in the EU. German academic libraries are currently involved in 30 EU projects ranging from digitalization and cataloging to mobility to library management and IT projects. This article describes the political background behind EU library projects over the last 20 years, the areas in which German academic libraries are involved, and the current focus of EU funding. It also describes regional subsidy programs and examines their relevance to libraries while giving specific examples.

An Overview of German Academic and Legal Research Libraries

Katherine Read identifies some of the main issues which made a particular impression on her during her CILIP sponsored visit to Germany. Particular highlights include a feature on a virtual library of legal resources and a look at some of the current copyright issues under discussion.

German academic libraries: tradition and change

Institutions, ressources humaines, bâtiments, collections, catalogues, preservation, services aux utilisateurs, gestion des bibliotheques, tendances de developpement

REUSE or Rule Harmonization

German academic libraries acquire a large number of books from British and American publishers. The bibliographic records of the Library of Congress and the British National Bibliography are offered in most German library networks. Thus, projects REUSE and REUSE+ were undertaken when there was a demand for harmonization of Germany cataloging rules with AACR2. Experts in the United States and Germany systematically analyzed, bibliographic data and compared the codes on which the data were based. Major and minor differences in cataloging rules were identified. The REUSE group proposed German participation in international authority files and changes in RAK, the German cataloging rules. In REUSE+ the different types of hierarchical bibliographic structures in USMARC and MAB2 and other German formats were analyzed. The German project group made suggestions concerning both the German formats and the USMARC format. Steps toward rule alignment and harmonization of online requirements were made when the German Cataloging Rules Conference made decisions on resolutions prepared by the Working Groups on Descriptive Cataloging that dealt with titles, encoding of form titles and conference terms, prefixes in names, hierarchies, entries under persons and corporate bodies, and the conceptual basis of RAK2 in the context of harmonization. Although problems remain, German rule makers have made progress toward internationality.

Interview with Jeannette Lander

This interview was conducted on October 22, 1998, at the University of Illinois at Chicago with Helga Kraft and Dagmar Lorenz. Development of Lender's Writing Career Q: Your career as a writer took unusual turns. You grew up in a Yiddish-speaking family in the United States-Atlanta-in the 1930s and 1940s, but later decided to write in German for a German-speaking audience. How did these particular circumstances come about? JL: The circumstances came about seemingly without my doing. I married a German man. After we had lived in America for some time together, we moved to Germany. And I had always been writing. And when I completed my education I had a doctorate from the Freie Universit/it Berlin. My dissertation was published in Germany and also another little monograph was accepted for publication. I was encouraged, as far as language was concerned. Q: What did you study at the Freie Universit/it Berlin? JL: American Literature and English Literature. I wrote my dissertation on William Butler Yeats, who was an Irish and English author. They make a distinction in Germany more so than here. American and English Literature is one subject here in the English language, but in Germany these are two separate subjects. Q: Did you consider an academic career? JL: I did not consider an academic career. My husband had that plan for us, but it just wouldn't work, for financial and other reasons. I always wanted to write. But I'm the type of person who, when she begins something, she ends it, and I wanted to study until I got a degree. But I didn't want to teach. I had an offer to become an assistant professor but I turned it down. Q: Did your academic background help your writing career or did it rather hinder it? JL: Neither. I think writing fiction and writing essays or articles are two completely different matters. Academic training taught me to do research. I can go into a library and I can function quickly and find things, because I know how to find them. That has been a help. And then, of course, it's very good to have knowledge about other writers over the centuries, and to be able to draw on that, because otherwise you would start out in a very primitive manner and do everything all over again, so to speak. You know and have respect for what has been done. I will never forget my experiences in American university libraries. These experiences unfortunately can't be made in German academic libraries. You don't have the experience of going into the stacks and sitting among the books and just pulling them out. In Germany you thumb through a card catalogue and order a book sight unseen. Paging through the many books on your subject is something priceless, feeling how much has already been written. You get a sense of an awe, which is very good for a writer. Q: This is very interesting, because some writers don't read other writers because they are afraid they have done something better than what they want to do at this point. JL: When I am in the process of writing, I find it difficult to read anything except nonfiction. Then I like to read related themes on my subject matter. I find it hard to read, for instance, completely different novels which are about completely different things while I am writing a novel, writing fiction, and so I don't do that. Q: That would distract you, wouldn't it? JL: It distracts you from your language. It gets you off your tone of voice. It distances you from your characters. It sidetracks you. I can understand these other authors who say they don't ever read, because ifyou read really good, admirable works, it intimidates you a little bit, and you think: I can't do this. The people who incite you to writing are the people who write mediocre books, which make you think: Oh, I can do better than this. That inspires you to sit down and try to do it better. …

The Regensberg Classification: A Short Survey

ABSTRACT The University of Regensburg Library was founded in 1964 as a collection of books on open-access shelves. Therefore the Library established a new “home-made” classification scheme. Like LCC, a classmark consists in general of three principal elements: location number, classification number and author marks (formulated by Cutter and Sanborn). But unlike most academic libraries in Germany, Regensburg has developed its classification in line with the classification of a large group of German academic libraries. The 34 individual schedules are primarily kept up-to-date by: • Newsletter (semi-annual), published by the secretary at Regensburg • On-going contact between specialists and the secretary • New editions of the individual schedules appearing periodically Our plans in the field of classification include: • Updating according to developments in the sciences and humanities • Online classification

Der Einfluß des Wissenschaftsrates auf die Entwicklung der wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Article Der Einfluß des Wissenschaftsrates auf die Entwicklung der wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland was published on December 1, 1997 in the journal ABI Technik (volume 17, issue 4).

Auf dem Weg zur „digitalen Bibliothek"

The last two years an increasing number of German academic libraries started to realize the idea of a ,,digital library. This article offers a survey of projects in digitalization, actually realized at the University library of Augsburg (Bavaria). The general intention is to enrich library services and to improve the infrastructure of scientific information by transferring digital informations and documents via World Wide Web directly to the PCs of scholars and scientists. The concepts of the projects show a variety of contents and aims. The article deals especially with problems of retrospective digitalization and points out some practical experiences.

The Acquisitions of Serials in East German Academic Libraries Before and After the "Wende"

When, after World War II, German academic libraries undertook the recovery from the low point in their acquisitions which had been precipitated by fascism and the war, they encountered the same problem in all four zones of occupation: the old Reichsmark had become a devalued internal currency not usable for purchasing abroad. The currency reform of 1948 solved this problem for the three Western zones of Allied occupation. but only intensified the problem for libraries in the Soviet Zone, for then the purchasing power of their currency ended at the border crossing. Soon thereafter, currency reform was also undertaken in the Soviet Zone, but it did not effect any positive change for the libraries there, since this new currency was also not freely convertible. There were no problems m purchasing items either of domestic production after the founding of the GDR on October 10, 1949 or from the Soviet Union and countries of the People's Democracies, but they could not buy anything from the Federal Republic of Germany or the West. This limit which the currency reform imposed on the importation of literature from the Western world had, from the Communist perspective, a positive and negative side to it. On the one hand, it was easier to fend off politically and ideologically unwanted publications. On the other hand, however, it made the acquisition of politically neutral literature in the fields of natural science, technology and medicine more difficult.

Possibilities of income generation in German academic libraries

In times of austerity, universities as well as other institutions are called on to manage economically and if possible to win extra resources. Today, university funding by government depends not only on student numbers or subject fields, but also on the amount of income outside regular funding. There is also a marked trend of introducing fees, at least for some services.

Projects in German academic libraries

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) supports IT projects of German libraries with a special funding program for Modernization of Academic Libraries. Between 1998 and 1993 the main areas of project activity have been OPAC-user-interfaces, CDROM networks, automatic cataloguing and indexing, SR/Z39.50, ILL, and internet working of union Cataloguing Systems. A recent evaluation of the program indicates that projects were not primarily concerned with cost reduction and stretching of financial resources, but rather were aimed at improvements of service quality and the formation of a competitive industry structure in the libraries sector

Two German Library Journals: The "Zentralblatt" and the "Zeitschrift"

Two major periodicals represent the interests of academic libraries in Germany, the Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen (ZB) in the East and the Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie (ZS) in the West. The former, founded in 1884 at Leipzig, soon achieved international recognition as a foremost scholarly library journal. This study traces how, in the early postwar years, it attempted to maintain its position as the representative journal for all German academic libraries, but how, after 1950, with the increasing alienation of the two Germanies this proved impossible, and it became more and more a spokesman for the Communist library program. As a result in 1954 a new journal, the ZS, was initiated in the West. There the latter has carried on the role once played by the ZB, but with the significant difference that, whereas that journal traditionally emphasized history, the ZS has concerned itself especially with technical services and other current developments in academic libraries.