Guten Tag von Berlin!
I just returned from a meeting with Frau Dr. Rothe and Herr Dr. van Capelleveen of the Main Library of the Free University (FU) of Berlin. We talked at length about the management of the library, intellectual freedom, classification, and more. Read on to see what I learned!
The first thing I questioned was the way intellectual freedom is handled. From prior knowledge, I knew that certain controversial works were given special treatment in the libraries. I asked about works, such as Mein Kampf, and was told that the FU library was on the liberal end of the spectrum here in Germany. At this library, these types of works are held in the rare books collection so that they are accessible to all, but they are not allowed out of the library. This is to prevent them from disappearing, either to people opposed to the work or the Neo-Nazi movement wanting to keep the copy. Not all of the books held in this fashion have to do with the Nazi movement. This treatment is of all controversial works, one example of a recent addition to the collection was about the Armenian Genocide.
The classification system of the library is somewhat different than the US. However, the Universities do use a standard similar to AACR2. Librarians here were considering a more international friendly system, but because AACR2 is already quite old, they have decided to wait until the next system is agreed upon.
The management of the library is very similar to the states. The Director reports to the President and the Chancellor of the University. The President is the person who looks at the political aspects of the system while the Chancellor manages the financial information. The department heads then report to the Director.
Of course the discussion turned also to politics, the economy, and the University system as a whole. Because attending University in Germany is virtually free (fees for students go toward insurance, public transit passes, etc. and usually are not more than 1000E per year), the majority of money the University receives is from taxes. There are also very few grants available, especially when compared to the US. Unfortunately, much like the US, the funding for the library has been continually declining. A joke shared between us was that the only numbers going up were those for Inter-Library Loan statistics.
Amazingly, Inter-Library Loan is quite wide (the University can borrow from any other in Germany) and is free. Because the University is funded by taxes, there is no charge for non-students either. This may change in the future, but the numbers discussed were less than 2E per request.
We also discussed electronic information (journals, databases, etc). The Main Library at FU has about 500 databases and has access to thousands of journals. They also have access to some E-Books, but there is less want for this because the majority are in English. Also, most of the faculty prefer journals for the speed in which they are published.
Anyway, that is all for now…I am off for a little bit of wandering!