Entries by Brigitte Doellgast

Prof. Cornelia Vonhof was chosen as Librarian in Residence for 2013.

Cornelia Vonhof has been Professor for Public Management at the Hochschule for Media in Stuttgart since 2004, primarily in the bachelors and masters degree programs of the Library and Information Management. Having served as director of diverse public libraries for 14 years, she then became a public service business-management consultant. In her application she stressed that she during her residency she hopes “to gain advice and ideas on critical factors for success in strategic management and management instruments systems, in order to put them into practice” in her work. She is “familiar with developments in the U.S. library system from the literature, but information gained directly during an exchange has a completely different quality.”

The final installation of our End(s) of the Library project debuted on April 2 here in our library: an exhibit by the artist collective known as The Serving Library. Angie Keefer, Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt have been collaborating under this name since 2011. Twice a year they issue Bulletins of the Serving Library, which, in the broadest sense, address “ideas related to publishing.” The three have their problems with how publishing houses do business and view their work as a direct response to the “inflexibility of existing publishing channels.” The articles they collect for the Bulletins are first published on their website, and only then published in book form. A reversal, that is, of what most journals now practice in making their content available online only three months after print publication.

For the images published in the Bulletins the artist trio goes a step further: in addition to the digital and print versions they also collect, in as far as possible, the originals that are being replicated. If the Serving Library is invited by an institution such as the Goethe-Institut to produce a new edition of the Bulletins, then the process includes an exhibition of some of these original objects. Originals, reproductions, digital copies – all three forms are considered to be equal.

Thus far, the group has published four Bulletins, and the four exhibition frames in the Library of the Goethe-Institut present a few of the originals as well as the print editions of the Bulletins (in special library bindings). The fifth frame is still empty, standing in for the fifth of the Bulletins, which currently is being created and will celebrate its launch on June 21 in the Goethe-Institut Library. Its theme: Germany.

The opening of the next exhibition took place on February 26: Christian Philipp Müller brought a selection of archival documents and photos relating to the Documentas from 1972 and 1977. He chose this material because the archive of 1972 Documenta director Harald Szeeman was recently acquired by the Getty Institute in Los Angeles. The exhibition in New York brings original documents from Kassel together with digitized objects from Los Angeles.

Another highlight of the exhibition are 2 walking sticks (in bronze and iron), that Joseph Beuys gifted to Arnold Bode, the director of the first Documenta. The Federal Cross of Merit that Bode received from President Theodor Heuss is also exhibited.

The collection of the Goethe-Institut New York is included in the dialogue between 3 institutions: all titles acquired by the library in 1972 and 1977 are on display. It’s an admittedly eclectic assortment that includes Documenta catalogs (of course!) but also an English-language edition of Goethe’s “Elective Affinities”. Titles such as “Germany Your Prussians” and “New York – a wonderful catastrophe” were also bought in these years.

Further information can be found on the website of the Goethe-Institiut