German Resources Project Spring Meeting Report
March 21-28, 1999
Göttingen, Germany
"The greatest innovations in librarianship in the coming years
will occur through international cooperation."
-- Barbara Lison-Ziesson, Director, Bremen City Library, at the Project
EXPLOIT meeting in Leipzig, Germany
The German Resources Project is one of six regional projects sponsored by the AAU/ARL Global Resources Program, a joint effort of the Association of American Universities and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). A grant of $35,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to ARL in
support of the German Resources Project supported two conferences of North American and German academic librarians. The first was held in June 1998 at the Library of Congress, and the second in March 1999 in Göttingen and Leipzig. Initiatives that emerged from the first meeting were developed further at the second into a work plan to be carried out by the participating institutions.
Four working groups were created at the June 1998 meeting to focus on areas that offer potential for collaboration: bibliographic control; collection development; digital libraries; and document delivery. Each group prepared a full agenda and list of action items for the March meetings in Germany, focusing on specific projects that would address the issues identified at the earlier meeting in Washington. Both the plenary sessions in Germany and the working group meetings led to highly productive dialogue that pointed to a promising future for cooperation. (For a list of participants in the March 1999 meetings, see the end of this report.)
The meetings were held at the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (SUB) at the Universität Göttingen, an appropriate location because of the library's rich history and the leadership role it has played in the German academic library community. The administrative headquarters of the
Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund (GBV), a large consortium of north German libraries, is housed in the SUB as is the Göttinger Digitalisierungszentrum (GDZ), one of two national digitization centers. The ties among the SUB, the GBV, and the GDZ have facilitated the development of collaborative projects in the German Resources Project. The importance of the meeting was underscored by the welcome extended to the participants by the chancellor of the university, Horst Kern. Additional meetings were held in Leipzig, another city of great importance in the history of publishing.
Summary of Agreements
A number of agreements and project initiatives emerged from the meetings: 1) the development of a formal work plan for the creation of GBVdirekt/North America, a German document delivery system that will be extended to include North American participants; 2) the identification of several thematic digital library projects; 3) an agreement in principle to monitor and coordinate digital library projects; 4) the identification of several possible points of collaboration among North American and German collection development efforts; and 5) an agreement to bring the North American and German cataloging communities closer through improved communication. These initiatives, and others that were agreed on during the meetings, will be pursued "virtually" on the respective listservs of the working groups over the course of the next several months, and efforts will be documented on the Project website.
The sixteen North American and nineteen German participants who attended the meetings utilized their time together to discuss document delivery issues, digital library standards, and differences in cataloging cultures, as well as the potential for productive collaboration, stimulated by new computer and telecommunications technologies. Formal activities included plenary sessions, working visits to the university research library and the GDZ, meetings of the working groups, and a session to report the results of the meetings of the working groups. The participants included scholars, administrators from research institutes, larger academic libraries, and specialist librarians.
Working Group Reports
The working group meetings proved to be very productive. Because of common interests, the Collection Development and Bibliographic Control working groups held a joint meeting. Christine Bossmeyer, head of technical services at Die Deutsche Bibliothek (DDB), indicated that her library is willing to pursue further collaboration with North American research libraries. She noted that the DDB has been considering an online version of the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie, and asked the group if this would be more useful as a selection tool than the current print version. The Bibliographic Control Working Group also met on its own and discussed the initiative underway to translate AACR2 into German, and the proposal to organize a community of catalogers of German-language materials. Bernhard Eversberg demonstrated his new concordance database of German and English cataloging terms, and the group also discussed strategies for utilizing Project REUSE to disseminate among
the North American catalogers innovative practices common in the German cataloging community.
The Collection Development Working Group discussed possible projects that would increase awareness of collection strengths at all participating institutions. There was interest in expanding knowledge of specialized web resources, and in utilizing such gateways as collection development tools. There was also promising discussion of the possibility of developing parallel partner institutions for the German Sondersammelgebietsplan, or special system of discipline-specific library centers. (The minutes of the
meetings of the Collection Development Working Group can be found at http://lcweb.loc.gov/loc/german/colldevgoettminutes.htm.)
The Document Delivery Working Group is spearheading the implementation of an innovative document delivery service, GBVdirekt/North America, which has been in development since fall of 1998. In addition to investigating details of funding and technical functioning of the document delivery system, the group took promising first steps toward formal agreements between North American and German libraries regarding the loan of "returnables." Although such formal agreements have been discussed in the past, new technologies offer easier access to the union catalog of the GBV. The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) has the VEL catalog, which was mentioned as a possible U. S. counterpart to the GBV union catalog. (The minutes of the meeting of the Document Delivery Working Group can be found at:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/loc/german/docdelgoettminutes.htm.)
The Digital Libraries Working Group focused on two areas: how to ensure the effective interaction of German and North American digital libraries in the future, and how to monitor and coordinate these
collaborative digital library activities. The group focused on the possibility of establishing a clearinghouse to address the latter issue. Four subcommittees were formed to follow up on ideas from the meeting: topics; existing sites; copyright; and clearinghouse. (The minutes of the meeting of the Document Delivery Working Group can be found at:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/loc/german/diglibgoettminutes2.htm.)
The Project in Germany and Future Steps
At the final plenary session, participants assessed the current situation of the German Resources Project in Germany. Five German libraries are official participants, and several other institutions have expressed interest, including the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Beatrix Dudensing, coordinator for the project in Germany, has published an article on the project
<http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/ebene_2/2_germre.htm>. It is hoped that the enthusiasm generated by the meeting and publicity for the project will generate increased interest on the part of German
research libraries.
Participants in the March meeting agreed unanimously to plan a meeting for 2000, to be organized, if possible, around the Deutscher Bibliothekskongress on March 20-23
(http://www.htwk-leipzig.de/kongress2000).
Following the meetings in Göttingen, participants moved to Leipzig to the second phase. They attended a conference on the future of libraries in the European Community, part of a series of meetings that are assessing the European Telematics Programme. The series in known as EXPLOIT: Exploitation of the Results of the Libraries Programme. Participants enjoyed tours of other libraries, and met with eastern German librarians from Saxony, Sachsen-Anhalt, and Thuringia. Eastern German libraries were neglected during the GDR years but are of great interest to researchers in North America. It is hoped that they can be integrated into the German Resources Project in the future.
