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236 BuB | Summary Lesesaal
New Directions in Schools / Opportunities
for Public Libraries (Karsten Schuldt
(pp. 174–177)
If public libraries want to collaborate with
schools, they need to be aware of changes
taking place there. Particularly relevant is the
paradigmatic change in the governance of
schools which has taken place in educational
policy since the 1990s and is known as »Neue
Steuerung« (New Governance) in Germany’s
pedagogical sciences. For schools and libraries
it opens up both opportunities and potential
conflicts in areas of cooperation, which
cannot be regarded in isolation, but rather
within the framework of a network of institutions.
And what does this mean for libraries
which want to work with schools? They will
encounter schools which, on the one hand,
are supposed to make their own decisions
about daily operations and instruction, but,
on the other hand, are compelled to plan and
evaluate their own development within a larger
educational system. Hence, they have
the authority to use cooperative ventures to
reach their pedagogical goals. But they are
also in a position to learn quickly and to evaluate
such cooperative efforts, to end them or
to put a stop to collaboration before it even
begins.
Any institution which wants to work with
a school will have to adjust to this situation.
The library support that schools can use and
will make requests for is increasingly dependent
upon the individual school’s profile and
less upon an overall plan.
Schools are under pressure to develop
their own profile and take responsibility for
the learning process. Public libraries can offer
schools support once they accept the fact that
they are part of a growing network of collaborating
institutions.
More Opportunities than Risks / Public Libraries
In Participatory Budgeting – Positive
Examples in Berlin (Heike Stadler)
(pp. 196–199)
Participatory budgeting is a process in which
citizens can discuss and make recommendations
on a municipal budget. Active citizens
participate in the creation of a budget and its
future revenues and allocations. The budgetary
council decides whether to accept or reject
these recommendations. It must inform
the public of its decisions and the implementation
of the citizens’ recommendations in
an understandable and transparent manner.
Participatory budgeting is a feature of participatory
democracy and contributes to the
modernization of public management in a
variety of sectors.
Heike Stadler’s article calls attention to
participatory budgeting, its current status and
the characteristics involved. She cites several
examples of its application in German libraries
and the positive experiences in Germany’s
capital city, Berlin.
However, there are also skeptical opinions.
Since local citizens may signalize that
they would forgo certain public services, even
to their own detriment, skeptics see libraries
under a considerably more pressure than
ever before. They consider it necessary to get
citizens more involved in library affairs or, in
other words, to pay more attention to the
library’s role in local networking.
How to Win New Clients With Elegance and
Sportsmanship / The University of Ingolstadt
Library Supports Student-Run Enterprises –
Competitive Advantage Through Information
Competency (Thomas Bartholomé)
(pp. 205–207)
Engineering students at the University of Ingolstadt
(Bavaria) set up their own companies
already in the first semester. Their goal is
to enter the market for automotive supplies,
and make »BMW Motorcycles« an offer for
motorcycle brakes that is better than all their
competitors. The students plan every stage of
the business, from development to production,
from logistics to sales.
Each company consists of 20 »employees«
who take on all the various professional roles
of a middle-sized automotive parts enterprise,
including the executive officer, controlling,
marketing, human resources, technical
development, and construction. To fulfill
their tasks, the students need support, including
that of the university library. The library
fulfills in this way its primary function as
a service provider for students. At first this
is not an easy task, because the library does
not have the best reputation. On the whole,
first semester students assume that they have
no need for library services, since they have
»Google & Co«. But this changes gradually as
they learn in a number of library sessions how
to do their research strategically.
Students submit two written assignments
to the library staff to demonstrate what they
have learned: a documentation of their research
and a mind-map of the search terms
used. The former is a step-by-step documentation
with comments and explanations and
quickly reveals whether the academic research
process has been understood. Furthermore
the entire company works as a team on
a mind-map of potential search terms. In doing
so, they demonstrate clearly the connections
between the individual professions in
the company.
Translated by Martha Baker
www.B–u–B.de
BuB | 63 (2011) 3