Performance and Quality in the Libraries of the Federal Republic of Germany

Some 13 000 public libraries in Germany come under the responsibility of town councils or churches. The concepts developed by the Federal Union of German Librarian Associations, the Permanent Commission of Länder Culture Ministers and the Council of Towns supply the guidelines in this field. The financial stringency of the 1970s and the budget restrictions of the 1980s forced German public libraries to prove their efficiency. The German Institute of Libraries, in cooperation with the German Libraries' Statistics Office and the German Institute of Normalisation, works at revising the performance indicators of the public libraries. Whereas the marketing projects and programmes have evolved considerably in the course of the last decade, the management of quality has been explored little by the German public libraries. The librarians have, however, begun to reflect on quality, its measure and its improvement.
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