Library development concept 2017 to 2020

At its meeting today, the Chemnitz City Council approved the concept for the development of the city library in the cultural sector of the city of Chemnitz from 2017 to 2022 - subject to the availability of budget funds.

The future-oriented library strategy is intended to contribute to quality assurance and the citizen-orientated use of resources. Technical and media developments will play a decisive role in the future of the city library in the coming years.

Barrier-free, low-threshold, non-commercial access to reliable information will continue to characterise its work in the future. In the long term, print and digital media will continue to coexist, although the library's traditional service model with its core business of "out-of-home lending" will continue to lose importance.

In view of challenges such as demographic change, integration and inclusion as well as the digital divide in society, the city library wants to develop its range of products and services in a future-oriented manner and thus make a positive contribution to urban development.

One focus is on further expanding its function as a public, inner-city place of learning. The city library aims to play a key role in the networking of educational programmes at a municipal level.

The current good performance is to be stabilised or increased by 2022. This is to be achieved by offering a customer-oriented, flexible range of services, optimising the book bus and lending services, increasing opening hours - there are plans to extend the opening hours of the central library on Wednesdays in 2017 - and expanding media education services and increasing cooperation with educational institutions. All library facilities are to be further developed into attractive, modern, barrier-free, flexible learning centres and intercultural meeting places.

In addition to physical media, electronic media will increasingly characterise the Chemnitz City Library's collection. This stock segment will more than double over the next few years due to the high customer demand. In line with current media developments, fee-based database services and online portals must be expanded in order to make them accessible to all sections of the population.

Chemnitz City Library is developing an overall digital-analogue strategy for its online services - the "24-hour library".

In order to achieve a high level of social participation and integration of all people, low thresholds and accessibility are of particular importance in the strategic orientation of the city library. Target groups with special needs, such as educationally disadvantaged people with disabilities or migrants, are receiving ever greater attention in the services offered. Customers with limited mobility and the very elderly can have media delivered to their homes using the mobile delivery service.

An electronic event calendar will be implemented by the end of 2017 to enable modern and effective event bookings.

Special events are also being organised. The 7th Literature Days will take place in 2018. There are plans to develop "LESELUST" into a supra-regional reading festival. Also in 2018, the historically valuable stacks will be presented in an exhibition to mark the 875th anniversary. In 2019, the city library will celebrate its 150th anniversary and a week of celebrations is planned.

2017/2018 sees the introduction of the electronic commitment card. Customer data can then be managed paperlessly. Online registration and online payment are to be introduced as a modern service as early as 2017. Every citizen will then be able to become a member of the city library, use the services and pay their fees regardless of time and place.

The introduction of a joint customer card with the Chemnitz University of Technology library is planned for 2018. In the future, it should be possible to use the customer card for all cultural facilities and additional functionalities will be added, such as for cloakroom lockers, toilet access or copying facilities.

By 2022, 85% of all daycare centres and schools in the city should make use of one or more educational library services in the library or borrow library media for use in the facility. There are also plans to double the number of educational library events.