Portals to the past and to the future

Ever since the dawning of the digital age it has been unclear how libraries will develop in the future. Although struggling to combine the functions of educational institution, cultural organization and service provider, they are well able to rise to the challenge. The second English edition of the work „Portals to the past and to the future“ by Jürgen Seefeldt and Ludger Syré is an accurate and up-to-the-minute appraisal of contemporary German librarianship. This richly-illustrated volume provides an insight into German national library history, characterizes the individual types of library and describes the cooperation and performance of Federal German libraries with the help of selected examples. The interested reader will find a wealth of information on the cultural, educational and political background of libraries and the wide range of professional profiles associated with them. This book, which has also been published in Spanish, Turkish, Arabic and Russian alongside the original German, has established itself as a standard work on German librarianship. It aims to provide non-librarians and students of librarianship alike with an easy-to-understand review of the way in which a decentrally organized library network based on the principle of cooperation evolved after the Second World War and in the face of all adversity continued to develop within the federal state and rise to meet the challenges of the new millennium.