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A. Functions

The Library of the German Bundestag primarily serves the German Parliament. The Bundestag Library began its work in 1949 with a stock of 1,000 volumes taken over from the Parliamentary Council. Today, with over 1.3 million volumes, it has both an extensive collection of specialist literature and special collections of parliamentary materials and official publications. German official publications issued by the Federation, the Länder or federal states, and the communes are received by legal deposit. The Bundestag Library is also a deposit library for 10 international and supranational organizations, i.e. these organizations supply the Library with all their publications on a regular basis. Finally, the Library of the German Bundestag is one of the Federation's three official training libraries for librarians in the higher, higher intermediate and intermediate career ranges.



B. Users

The Bundestag Library primarily serves the Members of the Bundestag, the parliamentary groups and the Bundestag Administration. It is also used by the federal and Land authorities located in the Bonn and Berlin regions, the staff of the central associations of trade and industry represented in Bonn and Berlin, the diplomatic missions, and German and foreign journalists. The Bundestag Library is not open to the general public. However, in weeks when Parliament is not sitting, academics with special permission may be allowed access, but solely for reference purposes.



C. Library stock

The Library has a stock of 1,300,000 volumes. In addition, there are the volumes from the reference collections held by the staff of the Bundestag Administration and committees, which are also administered by the Bundestag Library.
The Library acquires around 21,000 new volumes annually and currently receives 9,177 periodicals, of which approximately 6,400 are of an official or semi-official nature.

The Library's collections mainly focus on politics, public administration, law, economics, social sciences and modern history. These collections are supplemented by publications in numerous other specialist fields which are essential in order to provide Members with as comprehensive a range of information as possible.

In addition to publications available through the book trade, the Bundestag Library also has collections which it receives by legal deposit, on the basis of an exchange of publications or as a deposit library. They include a large number of German and foreign parliamentary materials as well as one of the largest collections of official publications in Germany.

The collection of official publications from abroad includes the Law Gazettes of some 60 countries as well as parliamentary publications, statistical material and other official publications, mainly from European countries and the United States. The publications of over 200 governmental and non-governmental international and supranational organizations are also catalogued and indexed.

Other special features are publications from the field of higher education and a large quantity of "grey" literature, which the Library has collected from the outset. Grey literature comprises non-commercial semi-official and unofficial publications. It primarily consists of the publications of political parties, trade unions, special-interest groups and associations, citizens' action groups, research institutes and academic societies concerned with political issues, as well as publications from business and industry. The Library currently receives such publications from around 2,500 institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany and abroad.



D. Organization and staff

Within the Bundestag Administration, the Library is part of theDocumentation Directorate, which, in turn, is part of theReference and Research Services Directorate-General.

In addition to the management, the Library is divided into four sections:Collection Development I,Collection Development II,Indexing and Documentation, and theInformation and Reference Service.

Collection Development I is responsible for the collections which the Library of the German Bundestag receives by legal deposit, on the basis of an exchange of publications or as a deposit library.

Collection Development II deals with publications which the Library purchases, acquires as donations, or receives on the basis of an exchange.

The Indexing and Documentation Section is responsible for indexing monographs and literature which is not published as bibliographically independent works. A substantial amount of work is also involved in maintaining the thesaurus and the authority files, such as the authority file for corporate names and the authority file for persons. The staff of this section in the higher career range are also responsible for subject cataloguing the publications. The section is also responsible for compiling major subject-related bibliographies, for example on areas dealt with by study commissions, and on all current political issues. It is increasingly involved in indexing Internet texts and building up the electronic library.

The Information and Reference Service is responsible for assisting users with information and literature searches and answering specific enquiries. This often takes place through an in-depth discussion with the user. The provision of information also extends to compiling bibliographies or dossiers of material on the specified subject areas. In addition, information on suggested reading on current issues is posted on the Intranet.

The Bundestag Library currently has 91 staff across four career ranges. The 14.5 members of the higher service have a university education, while the 32.5 members of the higher intermediate service have polytechnic qualifications. The 31 staff of the intermediate service include librarians in the intermediate career range but also non-librarians such as the master bookbinder, who is the head of the Bundestag's bookbinding service, and the head of stacks. The 13 members of the ordinary service are skilled craftsmen and stack assistants.



E. Services

Catalogues

The catalogues list publications which have appeared as bibliographically independent works or as contributions to other works. Every year, around 15,000 articles from selected periodicals and collected works are indexed.

Card catalogue for literature up to 1986:

For literature published up to 1986, the Library's collections can be accessed via a five-part literature and documentation system comprising:

The system was taken over from the Library of the Kiel Institute of World Economics, whose director, Professor Wilhelm Gülich, was also the first head of the Bundestag Library.

The catalogue is available as a card catalogue and on microfiche. The transfer of these catalogue data covering the period up to 1986 to an on-line database is planned.

On-line catalogue for publications from 1987:

Since 1987, the Library has acquired and indexed publications with the help of an electronic library system. For literature published since 1987, a user-friendly on-line catalogue, known as an open public-access catalogue, or OPAC for short, is available. Both the occasional user and the specialist are offered appropriate access points for searches. The documentation system consists of fields for persons, subject titles, corporate bodies, subjects, and territorial entities and geographical regions. In addition to thesaurus-based searches, the OPAC also offers keyword searches and, for the period from 1998, searches via strings of indexing terms. Information on suggested reading on specific events or issues can be accessed on-line.

POLIANTHES library thesaurus

The catalogues are based on the POLIANTHES library thesaurus, which has been used to index the Library's collections since 1949. In 1997/1998, the subject thesaurus was thoroughly overhauled to meet the requirements of a user-friendly on-line catalogue. At the same time, it was brought into line, both in formal terms and in terms of content, with the thesauri of the Subject and Speakers' Indexes of the German Bundestag, PARTHES and ANTHES. This has made it easier to switch from one parliamentary information system to another. The subject thesaurus consists of 90 microthesauri. Its structure is thus similar to that of EUROVOC, the European Parliament thesaurus which is also used by various European Union Member States and some parliaments in Central and Eastern Europe.

Lending and reading room

Library material is issued to the user immediately. Some 70,000 volumes are lent out each year. The main reading room holds around 20,000 reference volumes classified by subject area. In the periodicals reading room, some 1,400 titles are freely available for perusal. A reading room was opened in the Jakob Kaiser Building in spring 2002. Here, a wide range of services are available, including information, research and lending services.

The Library regularly stages exhibitions of books on current and historical themes, which always have some connection to Parliament's work.

Information and literature searches

The range of library services includes an information and enquiry service, book searches, compilation of dossiers of material on complex themes, and induction into the use of the Library and catalogues. The Library staff's main task is to answer enquiries promptly and accurately, with a special focus on providing individual service and advice to users. This has proved to be the most effective form of service provision, given the often very varied and open-ended nature of the enquiries made by the users of the parliamentary Library. On-line searches in other libraries' bibliographical databases and on the Internet are becoming increasingly important.

All the information that can be obtained using the catalogues and databases can of course also be supplied over the telephone. Every year, around 1,200 enquiries on specific topics are processed, some 5,000 dossiers of material are compiled, and 86,000 requests for information dealt with.

The electronic library

In spring 2002, the Library began to set up an electronic library which has greatly increased the range of general information available to users and allows them quick access to politically interesting material directly from their offices. The electronic services comprise the following:

This greatly enhanced range of Library services can be directly accessed by Members via the Intranet from their Bundestag and constituency offices at any time.

Provision of reference material to committees and other bodies of the German Bundestag

Sets of reference material for longer-term use are made available primarily to committees and other Bundestag bodies. In well-founded cases, material required on a continuous basis can also be supplied to individual divisions of the Bundestag Administration.
Reference collections should normally consist of works required on an ongoing basis by Administration staff and committee members. They include general and specialized reference works, especially legal commentaries - usually in loose-leaf form - as well as works that do not fall within the areas covered by the Library's collections but are needed by Administration staff. In this context in particular, the provision of electronic publications, especially frequently used reference works and periodicals on the Intranet, is gaining in importance.

F. Information technology in the Library

At the beginning of 1998, the Library of the German Bundestag introduced a new library system. The ADIS/BMS system is a client-server solution with UNIX-based servers and Windows-based clients. In addition to processing acquisitions and cataloguing, modules are used for the issue system, thesaurus maintenance, WWW-OPAC, ADIS-client-OPAC with extended search components for specialists, and for compiling bibliographies, managing the circulation of periodicals, placing bookbinding orders and preparing statistics. Members can order all Library material from their offices.

The Library's electronic information services are developed and managed using the ADIS/BMS library software and a Content Management System. Both programs are available to users in the German Bundestag via the Intranet. The libraries of the federal ministries can access the data held by the Bundestag Library directly.

The Library has a CD-ROM server with which it makes around 70 CD-ROMs available via the Intranet. Electronic texts which are of particular and topical interest to policy-makers are currently stored on the production server in the catalogue database.

G. Premises

From the time of its establishment, the Library of the German Bundestag was always housed in temporary premises in Bonn which had not been designed with library functions in mind. With its move to Berlin in spring 2004, the Library is now housed with the Specialized Research Services in a building which, for the first time, meets its specific requirements. After a long period in which the Library was required to divide its functions between various buildings, it is now reunited under one roof and can offer a full range of services to the user.

The area of the Library which is accessible to users is located in the rotunda - sited by architect Stephan Braunfels in a prominent position within the architectural ensemble - of the Marie Elisabeth Lüders Building. The galleried reading room has a stock of around 20,000 volumes as well as more than 50 places for readers, each equipped with Intra-/Internet access. On the floor below, there is a periodicals reading room with more than 1,400 individual titles. On the entrance level of the rotunda, there are the loans and returns desks and a central information desk as the first point of contact for users. More detailed advice is provided to users on the floor below; the research area, with spaces for more than 20 users, all equipped with PCs, and the catalogue of persons and subject catalogue are also located here.

The Library has modern and well-equipped bookstacks on the lower storeys of the building. Reading rooms for special collections, such as official publications, loose-leaf items and maps, are grouped around the rotunda on the hallway level. The Library management and various other services are also accommodated here.

The Library has a small bookbinding workshop. The bindery preparation unit is also housed here.

Marie Elisabeth Lüders Building
Marie Elisabeth Lüders Building



H. Library publications

The Library publishes two bi-monthly bulletins: an acquisitions list and a list of newly published articles:

to inform its users about works recently acquired by the Library.

It also produces an in-house information bulletin:

featuring recent politically relevant publications, with short articles on the works in question.

The Library also publishesBibliographien, a series of bibliographies on current political and economic issues, andLänderbibliographien, a series of bibliographies relating to specific countries.

All these publications can also be accessed on-line.

Quelle: http://www.bundestag.de/htdocs_e/library/bibl1en
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