Libraries in Germany are not free. Membership costs from €15 to €25 a year with discounts or free membership for seniors, handicapped and the unemployed; and group rates for families. This was not always the case. According to librarians in Bochum, libraries began charging for membership in the early 1990s.
I heard the term “person with a migrational background” for the first time in Germany. It refers to people not born in Germany and also to people whose forefathers were not born in Germany. I think it says a lot about Germany’s attitude toward immigration, which Germans, according to one librarian with whom I spoke, are just getting around to acknowledging.
The Stadbucherei Bochum, like the library in Cologne, is trying very hard, and with some success, to attract immigrants and their children. Among other things, some libraries in Germany offer three-month free trial memberships to immigrants and story-times for kids in their native language.
Bochum has what it calls a central library with two branches, a family library and a job-career library with its own homepage. The job-career library has a branch at the local university and a branch in the Stadtmitte (downtown area). The library provides reference service by mail and by SMS.
The collections at the family library, the branches of the central library and the job-career library are organized by theme (thematische Medienprasentation)rather than the ASB (Allgemeine Systematik für Bibliotek), the German equivalent of the Dewey Decimal System. Much of the collection at the central library is organized by theme. In the job-career library, the management books are also classified by author as well to make searching for them easier. The Bochum library calls its classification system BOKLA or Bochumer Klassifikation. The library rotates much of its collection among its three branches annually.
The Job Career Library offers information about Choosing an Occupation, Job Training, Applying for a Job, Starting a Business, Continuing Education Employment Law and the Economy. It is open 53 hours a week. It has six PCs with internet access for general use and two PCs with internet access for completing job applications. The staff has partnered with employment agencies, schools that offer occupational training and organizations in the city that help entrepreneurs establish businesses. It participates in career fairs, job fairs and youth conferences.
The Bochum library gives accounts to schools and other institutions and it has linked its customer profiles with its acquisition system. This allows the library to prepare boxes of materials according to theme for teachers. The family library also prepares boxes of materials by themes for families that request this service. The library provides free delivery of these boxes to schools and institutions but families have to pick up and return the boxes themselves.
The job-career library was part of a major reorganization of the library undertaken between 1998 and 2003 with funds from the Bertelsmann Stiftung (Bertelsmann Foundation). The goals of the project were to increase membership by 50%, increase the number of children who belong to the library by 30 to 40% and to increase lending by 30%.
We visited the branch library in Wattenscheid, which didn’t become part of Bochum until 1975. In addition to the library, the building houses the Wattenscheid Archive and an adult education center. The library is in an immigrant area. It collects in German, Turkish, English, Russian.
The library offers story times in several languages. The stories are read by volunteers. The library gives children reading cards, which it stamps each time a child finishes a book. The library has an arrangement with two local bookstores whereby the children can exchange the card once it has been stamped eight times for a children’s book with a value up to €8,00.
Liselotte is the first name of a well-known author from the area. The library has a serpent named Leselotte (lesen means “to read” in German) that it brings to preschools and kindergartens. Leselotte is a serpent head and a collection of pockets strung together. There is a book in each pocket. One book is Leselotte’s diary. Someone makes an entry in the diary at each place Leselotte visits.
The library has partnered with the adult education center to run programs. It recently hosted a wine tasting.
Das Leben in Bochum
For lunch we had Ruhr currywurst, which we were told is different from Berliner currywurst. It is made with weisswurst and served in a sauce made with cayenne, whereas Beliner currywurst is made with Bruhwurst and served in a sauce made with chili powder.
Like other subways in Germany, the subway in Bochum is a light rail system. A notice in the Bochum subway cars tells riders to let the driver know if they will need a taxi when they get to their stop, and the driver will have someone arrange a taxi for them. Just another one of those things that somehow make life seem more civil in Europe than in the United States.
Bochum is in the heart of the Ruhr, Germany’s famous industrial area. It was stark zerstört (largely destroyed) during the Second World War. Bochum’s economy was based on the steel industry, which today is a shadow of what it once was. Opel is another mainstay, but Opel is owned by General Motors, which is in trouble. Nokia, the Finish company, manufactured in Bochum, but recently moved its operations to Romania. We were told that unemployment in some areas is as high as 50%.
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