Librarian in Residence – Goethe-Institut New York

The web portal www.interkulturellebibliothek.de goes online starting September 30, 2008!


When it comes to orientation within the new homeland, public libraries are important drop-in centers for immigrants in Germany. Whether materials with which to learn German, information about life in Germany, learning aides for pupils with a non-German mother tongue, or mother-tongue literature: through the delivery of countless materials, libraries have an important share in the integration of long settled and newly arrived immigrants.

Intercultural services have grown increasingly important in the last few years. Numerous public libraries purposefully include immigrants as target groups for their offerings.

Indeed, the provision of media and the formulation of mother-tongue information for this readership have been difficult for the libraries so far. Regarding the formulation of user information, who has a staff member already on the team with the relevant foreign language knowledge? How can someone in a small town library help a Turkish reader who, for example, is looking for a diabetic diet that is in line with her eating habits?

What has been customary in Scandinavia for 10 years already will now also be a reality in Germany: a cross-cultural web portal that provides library customers as well as librarians assistance in the appropriate language during their search for the right information.

The new portal features two levels:

• a library science level with texts and links to everything that exists about intercultural library work in the German-speaking realm (among other things integration concepts [national, communal, library-related]; professional literature; professional forums, organizations, and associations; practical examples from other libraries, both national and foreign)

• a language portal as a springboard for more than 20 languages: the most important immigrant languages in Germany which are spoken around Germany, as well as the languages most spoken worldwide: Albanian, Arabic, Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Chinese, Danish, English, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Swahili, Dutch, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese. Also included: multilingual sources as well as German as a second language.

In each “language springboard” are --- in as far as they’re available --- verification of foreign-language items in German public libraries as well as links to texts for library work, to multi-lingual glossaries and online dictionaries, to multi-language online information services as well as to numerous information portals, from electronic reference books to health information. The web portal was compiled by the expert group “Intercultural Library Work” in the German Library Association (DBV). It will be hosted by DBV and is accessible through its library portal (www.bibliotheksportal.de) as well as directly through www.interkulturellebibliothek.de.

The introduction and launching of the new intercultural web portal takes place on September 30 in the presence of the president of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, Dr. Claudia Lux, as well as the director of the German Library Association, Barbara Schleihagen.

For the group of experts:
Dr. Volker Pirsich, City Libraries Hamm/Westphalia (Chairman)

Is it important in the age of full text searching to still be concerned about classification? To adapt it to the sweeping changes, to keep it meaningful and up to date from day-to-day?

One could ask, does this topic have anything to do with intercultural library work? Well, at least in Hamburg, it does somewhat. In its structure, the classification system for our nonfiction titles comes from the 1950s. Continuously expanded and modified, it aligns itself with the “General Systems for Libraries,” but follows a special path, which to this day still leaves its “signature” on the inventory.

With the start of intercultural criteria implementation in all library areas, the time is approaching for Hamburg to address the nomenclature that has crept in. Cross-culturalism in all disciplines – but to what end? Our deliberations until now have been towards building up an intercultural collection that will consolidate the media offerings from all subject areas for interested parties and specialists.

But what kind of quality does a collection possess when it posits terms from the 1970s and doesn’t know terms from modern discourse such as migration and immigration? Do immigrants always remain foreigners?

These questions led to stirring discussions in the responsible circle of colleagues and thereby indicated how important it is to direct the intercultural gaze to the actual coverage of the inventory. To appreciate some classification as a social and contemporary mirror.

Every two years, Hamburg directs the gaze of the wide public to the east Asian region of growth, China, through CHINA TIME Hamburg 2008. Events of all kinds draw attention, convey information and make encounters possible. They document the diversity and also the inconsistency in China’s history and present, give insight into current developments and discourse and create a platform for dialogues. CHINA TIME Hamburg 2008 concentrates the diverse activities of the city, networks the numerous players and presents nationwide the broad spectrum of Hamburg’s growing expertise in China.

For CHINA TIME 2006, Bücherhallen Hamburg became a partner library of Shanghai Library. The Bücherhallen received more than 500 media items as a gift from Shanghai. The central library now commands a collection of around 1,100 Chinese-language print media from all fields of knowledge; in addition there are audiobooks and music recordings. Until 2011, the holdings should increase yearly with 100 media items.
www.chinatimehamburg.de/2008/