Librarian in Residence – Goethe-Institut New York

Forbes, the American business magazine, published in its online edition – under its tagline, “Home Page for the World’s Business Leaders” -- an article stressing the importance of librarians: “Young Learners Need Librarians, Not Just Google”.
Ultimately, according to the article, the internet as well needs criteria and information that enable users to discern the relevance of websites. The article quotes a survey taken among fifth-graders in the Netherlands. In answer to the question of how they searched for information, the most frequent answer was: “I type in the question.” And asked how they evaluated the answers they found, the answer was: “If it sounds good, it will be right.”
Whether students are taught research techniques in school with the help of a librarian or not leads, in the view of the author, to a new divide between those take a critical approach to information research and who therefore arrive at the wished-for – and above all – correct results, and those who muddle through with Google. As the information landscape becomes ever more overloaded, professional guides are of major importance.
Mark Moran, the author of this article, is CEO of FindingDulcinea.com (great name), whose mission it is “to bring users the best information on the Web for any topic, employing human insight and methodical review“. So he’s well aware of how much unreliable information there is to be found on the Internet and of just how important it is to take a critical stance. That he takes his praise of librarians seriously is reflected in the fact that a librarian is part of his team.

The library community in the US is enthusiastic about the article. The ‘M’ Word – Marketing Libraries blog writes: „Coming from a respected source like Forbes, it's a powerful tool.( …) Library advocates, put this in your arsenal and use it right away!“
Resource Shelf cheers: “…a superb column that we wish was longer even though the title says plenty. It’s a keeper (print, bookmark, whatever you do).”
And “The Librarian is IN” says: “Hurray! Our impact is finally being realized at the corporate level.”

The theme of the March issue of the German library journal, Buch and Bibliothek, takes a closer look at “Transatlantic Initiatives”. Bernd Schleh, editor of Buch and Bibliothek, asked me to write an article giving an overview of the situation of German in the US. The editors chose the title, “The Competition is Growing,” with the subtitle, “German Language and Culture are Losing Their Standing in the USA”. The article itself examines the issue more closely, of course. According to the German Federal Office of Statistics, in the year 2000, 42.8 million Americans (15%) declared that they were of German or part German heritage. So in 2000, as was the case in preceding years as well, those with German roots were the most prevalent. Moreover, 1.4 million Americans stated that they speak German at home. But the role that German culture and language play in the United States doesn’t necessarily reflect these numbers. Only c. 400,000 American elementary and secondary school students learn German, which is a relatively small number of the 53.8 million such students in the US, but one that also reflects the primary lack of interest Americans show in learning a foreign language. German nevertheless places third in the foreign languages that US students learn. The situation in colleges and universities is a similar one: German is offered at 1,200 institutions of higher learning and roughly 0.6% of all students learn German. So at the college level German also places third among foreign languages.

German collections in university libraries historically have been held in high regard. But in the interim there are only 25 university libraries that are systematically and extensively expanding their German collection. In public libraries a general downward trend is observed. The sinking demand for German titles has led over the years to a declining offering.

A further indicator of the difficult situation of foreign languages in the US is the number of translations: Only 3 percent of all books published in the US are translations, of which three-fourths are non-fiction titles, so that in the year 2004 only 874 literary translations were published in the United States.
This makes even more important the various initiatives of the Goethe-Institut, which range from the promotion of German as a Foreign Language to partner school initiatives to the German-American Partnership Program and the Transatlantic Outreach Program to financial support for translations. Also those activities carried out in the context of library cooperation - from the existence of the Library of the Goethe-Institut New York to the regular postings on this blog - help to keep alive and strengthen the dialogue between Germany and the US.

(The article can be found on pp. 214-217 in the March 2010 issue of 'Buch und Bibliothek'. Free access to the article is available c. six months after publication on the magazine's website.)

The fact that the focus of this year’s Librarian in Residence fellowships -- school libraries -- was well chosen was demonstrated at the German Library Conference. The session “Into the Schools!“, on the cooperation between public libraries and school libraries, was fully attended, with an audience of 200. It should first be mentioned – for American readers of this blog – that schools that students attend for the whole day, as in the US, are only slowly establishing themselves in Germany. And it is also important to know that school libraries in Germany -- as opposed to those in the US, which are a requisite part of most schools and which are staffed by qualified personnel -- are still more the exception than the rule. It should be mentioned as well that private schools play hardly any role in Germany. The great majority of students go to public schools, and all statistics and cases in point refer to public schools. And the issue of staff still pertains, even to those schools that have school libraries. Often it is teachers, parents or volunteers who run them. Increasingly growing in strength, however, are initiatives calling for public libraries and their “Office for School Media Librarians” to be the ones to staff school libraries.

Simone Vettel presented the model of Lahn Dill Kreis, a rural district in the state of Hesse. The district comprises 260,000 residents in 23 cities and municipalities. There are 15 public libraries and 96 schools in Lahn Dill Kreis. Hessian educational laws dictate that every school have a library. But the extent to which this regulation is met depends on the financial options. IMeNS – Informations- und Mediennetzwerk der Medienzentren und Schulen im Lahn-Dill-Kreis (Network of Information- and Media Centers and Schools in the Lahn Dill Region) – was established in order to derive the most out from limited funding. The project began in 2005 with 8 schools, and in the interim IMeNS supervises 50% of the schools in Lahn Dill Kreis. IMeNS offers training for teachers and students, which 20,000 students and 2,700 teachers have taken advantage of. The service also furnishes teachers with databases and teaching materials; media for preparing lesson plans, including supplementary materials, are available online. This model is quite consciously directed toward the cooperation between public libraries and school libraries. The school library is viewed as the introduction, so to speak, to the public library. In two locations, public libraries even share a common space with a school library. In the meantime, IMeNS has established itself very well in schools. All new teachers must obtain an IMeNS “driver’s license”.

Eva von Jordan-Bonin then presented the Office of School Media Librarians (known as the Schulbibliothekarische Arbeitsstelle (SBA) in Germany) of the Frankfurt Public Library. The city of Frankfurt has 165 schools with 30,000 students and 5,500 teachers. Founded in 1974, the SBA in Frankfurt is the oldest of its kind in Germany. It comprises 79 school libraries, but advises all schools in the state as well. The Office of School Media Librarians has 15 full-time and one part-time staff, 6 of whom are professional librarians and 9.5 of whom are specialists in media and information services (known in Germany as FAMI, who are equivalent to assistant librarians). In addition, c. 250 other individuals participate in overseeing school libraries (teachers, parents, volunteers), coordinated by the SBA. Thirteen of the school libraries share 6 of the salaried FAMI, who oversee the libraries full-time. Sixty-six school libraries have no director. Schools in need of special supervision – due, for instance, to reorganization – can request a media and information specialist for a period of 1 to 2 days. Since 2007, for larger projects (concept development for a school library, establishment of literacy programs, refurbishing a library), there is also the possibility of sending a member of the library staff to a 6- to 8-week training session. Very important is the close cooperation between the SBA and the school board. Applications for the request of a member of the SBA must therefore always be made by the director of the school and not by its teachers. Roughly 12 schools a year are able to take advantage of an extensive period of project supervision. The project guarantees:

- quality control
- personal contact with customers
- continuous further development through evaluation
- individual support
- optimization of resources through use of transferable modules

The program is an example of a pragmatic learning partnership and has a major widespread effect on libraries with a small staff.

The situation in the City State of Hamburg, presented by Ingrid Lange-Bohaumilitzky, has garnered great attention, due to the fact that the coalition agreement between the ruling parties (CDU and the Green Party) stipulates that all schools have school libraries. Cooperation with the Public Library of Hamburg was planned from the beginning. Three million euros have been allocated to create 9 prototype school libraries. All will have a uniform construction, uniform information systems and a core collection, which then can be expanded upon individually. The prototypes will be staffed by specialists. To their responsibilities belong:

- the direction of the library
- the coordination of temporary workers and full-time staff for lending of books
- advising students and teachers on the collection
- active participation in library-assisted instruction

Each school class spends one hour each week in the library. In addition, the library and information specialists offer an elective course in research. What is important is that the director of the school library be accepted as one of the teaching staff.

The experiences of all three colleagues coincide in showing that, working together, public libraries and school libraries are stronger.