German Libraries: A Portrait - Bremen

In times of empty public tills, it takes a lot of imagination to create new services for the ever-changing needs of library users. The team at the Public Library of Bremen has succeeded in doing this for many years.

A library with eight branches, 535,000 media units, 55,000 registered users, 13,400 official opening hours and 3.5 million loans, 1.3 million visitors and 1,700 events per year: as impressive as these figures may sound, the great innovative force of the Public Library of Bremen can be only indirectly read off from them.

Efficiency despite cuts

It is precisely thanks to this force that the Public Library has succeeded in expanding its services for the citizens of Bremen. “Our top priority is to put the tax money that we receive to the most efficient possible use”, says Barbara Lison, who has headed the Library since 1992. “Even if today we have only 85 per cent of the money available that we had in 2000, we’ve still increased our services significantly in the last ten years. That requires a lot of imagination and brain work.”

Her library team appears to be well equipped with both, as a glance at the latest projects shows. The Library relies, according to Lison, “on a duality of digital and real presence”: the priorities are therefore the expansion of online services on the one hand and the attractive design of the actual Library sites on the other.

Digital library – also for children and young people

The digital services of the Bremen Public Library go well beyond the now standard offerings such as electronic borrowing. It is particularly proud of www.rabe-kessi.de, a website for children built round the mascot of the raven Kessi, which has been online since 2009. Here information about the Public Library and life with books is presented in a stimulating way oriented to children. The website was created in collaboration with an agency and is being constantly developed by practical trainees. It is “well used”, says Lison.

Digital services for young people have also grown. A pilot project, the “e-lounge”, financially supported by parents and the community council, has sited a virtual branch of the Public Library in the Bremen Ronzelenstraße Grammar School. Since October 2010, all digital services that are available in the Library’s branches are available there in the lounge area. These include access to databases and the Munzinger Archive of Countries and Persons, which because of licensing agreements are not freely available on the Internet. The pilot project will be evaluated in mid-2011 – and possibly extended to other schools.

Library without a counter

Another focus of the Bremen Public Library is the modernization of the library sites. “We try to meet the needs of our visitors as far as possible”, emphasizes Lison. And so there is now a learning studio in the Central Library, with easily adjustable furniture and a graffito on the wall.

The plans go further. And, since almost all the library branches are now equipped with self-service functions, the scope for designing the site of the library has become correspondingly greater. “We don’t want to have a counter any more, but rather a reception area which is also suitable as a communication zone of particularly high quality”, says Lison.

But those who prefer the atmosphere of a traditional library will also not be disappointed. They can retire to the detective story library, housed in the old police conference room, where they can sit in leather chairs by the tiled fireplace. There they will find German-language detective novels and thrillers from past and present: approximately 4,500 titles, including several autographed first editions and secondary literature. The detective story library was winner of the competition “365 Places in the Land of Ideas”.

Profiling the users’ environment

In future, work on the users’ environment is to be further intensified. To this end the Bremen Public Library, in cooperation with the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, started a major project in October 2010 on the subject of “sinus milieus”. “We want to clarify precisely what milieus we reach with what services”, explains Lison. “That helps us to profile our holdings more concretely in the relevant direction.”

The Library Director still sees the biggest challenge in increasing library services despite ever decreasing financial resources. “But I always say: He who has no enemy relaxes his virtue”.