Elke Beer, Director of Chemnitz City Library, is retiring
On Friday, 16 April, the director of Chemnitz City Library, Elke Beer, has her last day at work. The qualified librarian has been working at the institution since 1975 and has now been in charge for 31 years.
Under her leadership, the institution developed into a modern, innovative metropolitan library. Together with her team, she shaped the digital transformation with up-to-date media, modern information technologies and professional information provision. Elke Beer also paid great attention to the quality of the library experience and developed the library facilities into places of encounter and communication as well as inclusion and integration. The city library has created a large network through diverse project work and co-operations and is a partner of numerous educational institutions and associations in the city and the region. For this dedicated work, Chemnitz City Library was awarded second place in the "Library of the Year" competition in 2006. In the nationwide performance comparison for public libraries (BIX) at the time, it took second place in 2010 and third place in 2011. In 2012, it was honoured with the Saxon Library Award.
Reading skills are an important foundation of any education, which is why Elke Beer considered the promotion of reading to be one of the main tasks of the city library as an educational partner for schools, especially in the age of digitalisation.
The new director, Corinna Meinel, will take up her position on 1 September 2021. Until then, the long-standing deputy director, Tina Goldammer, will take over.