Presenter: Florian Preiß, Librarian (Deutsches Museum, Germany)
Abstract:
The library of the Deutsches Museum, founded 1903, holds a collection of roundabout 1,000,000 printed volumes, among which nearly 17,000 rare books. It focusses on the history of science and technology and for this field it is responsible for the “Fachinformationsdienst Technikgeschichte” (subject information service for the history of technology). This is a shared acquisitions programme subsidized by the German Research Foundation who named several dozen German libraries, each designated for a given subject field of collection and acquisition. The Deutsches Museum was granted this Fachinformationsdienst for the first time in 2016 and since then is receiving additional funds for the acquisition of highly specialized publications, printed and electronic. The subject field of the Fachinformationsdienst was later extended to also include environmental history and the history of science.
The widening of its collection activity meant, that the resource sharing activity of the library would have to change, too. Printed monographs are lent via the German interlibrary loan network but can also be supplied to international libraries. To improve its delivery of journal articles, the library joined the SUBITO system in 2018. SUBITO is a document delivery network and organizing some part of the resource sharing activity of about 30 German libraries. Via the platform of SUBITO, libraries, companies and individuals from all over the world are able to order documents, which usually are delivered in less than 72 hours (or less than 24 hours for the rapid service, but then subject to a surcharge). Taking part in this network implicated a considerable increase of its delivery output for the library of the Deutsches Museum. But as the established technical infrastructure of the SUBITO network was ready to be used, workflows for document delivery could be condensed so that the additional output did not result in extra workload for library staff.
The library also serves the Deutsches Museum researchers and administrative staff and offers them interlibrary loan services to support their work and research. This is done on a local, national and also international level. For covering the local libraries, the library is employing one staff member as carrier, who regularly walks by the two large Munich university libraries and the Bavarian state library, to collect and return books which the library ordered for its patrons. The library is participating as a borrowing library in the German interlibrary network and provides books, which are not being held in German libraries from abroad to its patrons. In most cases, all document delivery transactions, even international loans can be offered free of charge to patrons of the library of Deutsches Museum.
As a service provider, the ILL activities of the library are closely associated to some related fields of support offered to its patrons. This includes for example the supply of archival material from external archives or copyright clearance support for pictorial material intended for use in publications. To support the open access activities of the museum researchers, the position of an open access advisor has been created.
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