The German National Library and the Covid-19 pandemic

As Germany’s central archival library, the German National Library (DNB) collects, documents and archives all publications and sound recordings issued in Germany since 1913 together with works that were compiled in the German language or relate to Germany. The collection is supplemented by the holdings in the German Music Archive, the German Museum of Books and Writing and the German Exile Archive 1933–1945.

With increasing numbers of coronavirus infections in Germany in March 2020, more and more cultural institutions decided to shut down their local services. The DNB closed its reading rooms and exhibitions on 16 March 2020, and a short time later, all operations of the institution, including exhibitions and events, were temporarily shut down. On the one hand, this was a tough choice because our patrons have to use most parts of our collections on site for copyright reasons. On the other hand, this was painful as we had been planning to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the unification of the former existing two libraries in the Eastern and Western parts of Germany into one institution, the DNB, in April with Wolfgang Schäuble, President of the Deutsche Bundestag, as a keynote speaker.

With the closure, the challenge of how to manage remote working has been faced: existing solutions were expanded quickly enabling our staff to work effectively from home. National and international business trips were cancelled, meetings and conferences were adjourned. Videoconferencing that has been used before was expanded as it was the only opportunity for most of our staff members to keep in touch. A crisis management team was established which met daily via a videoconferencing system. Staff was informed instantly after the meetings by email and on a hidden part of our website. At the end of May, meetings of the crisis management team have been reduced to once a week, and the general feeling within our staff is that crisis management has been quite successful and that we have been using this crisis as an opportunity for innovation.

Communication with our users has been provided continuously by email or telephone. Gradually, also our digital services were enhanced so that documents could be delivered to users in urgent cases. Usually, we offer access to all our holdings on site in Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main. Currently, our collections comprise more than 39 million items, of which more than 8 million items are online publications. During the closure, only about 1.3 million freely accessible online publications – and the virtual exhibitions – could be accessed from outside the reading rooms worldwide. We intensified our social media activities to promote the use of these online offerings.

Due to the fact that a large number of cultural events scheduled to take place at our locations had to be called off, we had to send cancellations to many partners involved – including authors, actors, film producers, musicians and publishers. In order to support the professional groups most affected, the DNB commissioned, for example, 15 actors and a small team of film-makers to produce the ‘Reading EUROPE’ clips. These film highlights draw attention to the diversity of the DNB’s collections. In addition to the exhibitions available online and the digital items in the catalogue, the web clips of the readings provide access to quotable works relating to Europe. Speaking of Europe, we started to rethink our plans for three conferences on the occasion of the German presidency of the EU Council in the second half of 2020 now to be held in a digital format.

At the end of April 2020, the authorities of the German federal states of Saxony and Hesse allowed library operations to be resumed, mainly focusing on the academic and special libraries. To be able to reopen our library it was important to adapt the general rules of conduct for avoiding contact, maintaining social distancing and hygiene to the special conditions of the DNB as a reference library.

In the reading rooms, all workplaces were blocked that had not the mandatory distance of 1.50 metres from each other. This left around 100 workstations at each of the library sites in Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main, which could be released for use. The reopening of the library took place on 4 May. ¹

In order to limit and control access, a reservation system used for event management was adapted enabling users to book one seat per day in one of our reading rooms online. A more flexible, browser-based booking system has been implemented in the meantime. A seat could be booked 1 week in advance for whole day. Quickly, it became apparent that all available places were allocated within seconds. However, as a number of reading room places are no longer occupied in the late afternoons and in the evenings, we decided to split the booking periods into two time slots. This means that after a break to clean the previously occupied places all reading room places are available again on the same day. The booking system with two time slots per day started on 8 June.

Although the reading places available are still booked out very quickly, the users are highly pleased with the reopening of our reading rooms in Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main, as the DNB has been one of the first libraries in Germany that offers its users more than just quick borrowing and returning publications on-site. We are now also implementing tools offering new ways to communicate with our users, for user introductions, training courses and so on in the form of video chats, webinars or web conferences.

To sum it up, we have been successfully extending the possibilities for large parts of our staff members to work from home. As a result, those working on site could keep the required minimum distance. We quickly had to equip more staff with devices supporting videoconferences and other communication formats. Many of our colleagues feeling reservations towards digitisation now see the advantages of working remotely. We are happy that we could reopen our buildings and reading rooms for our patrons comparatively soon. In the meantime, we have reached a ‘new normality’. We strive to keep some of the forms of ‘new work’ we established during the crises. Finally, we hope that the crisis will advance the digitisation in Germany and in German libraries and cultural institutions.