11 January 2021 press release

The future is becoming more digital. Everything analogue will be just as important.
The German National Library presents its Strategic Priorities 2021–2024

“The German National Library is an active cultural memory of the past and future.” This is the motto of the German National Library’s third Strategic Priorities publication, which focuses on a specific part of its legal mandate and follows on from the Strategic Priorities publications of 2014 and 2017. In order to be able to continue functioning as a cultural memory in the future, the German National Library aims to intensify its policy of viewing all processes and workflows through a “digital lens”. It will be expanding its digital collections and developing attractive, user-friendly forms of presentation. Moreover, it will be paying particular attention to digital cataloguing processes and pursuing interdisciplinary networking and communication activities with the fields of culture and science. The ongoing development of the German National Library as a learning organisation lays the foundations for all other fields of action.

The Strategic Priorities 2021–2024 shed light on the German National Library’s medium-term goals. They are based on the framework paper “German National Library 2025: Strategic Compass”, which was published in 2016 and sets the direction for a longer period. However, some of the goals set out in the current Priorities go far beyond 2025.

The German National Library’s goals are fleshed out and implemented in an internal package of measures, which is updated and evaluated every year, and in the work programmes derived from it.

German National Library Strategic Priorities 2021-2024
Online publication available in English and German at: https://www.dnb.de/EN/strategy

German National Library 2025: Strategic Compass
Online publication and order form for the print version published in German and English available at: https://www.dnb.de/EN/strategy

Contact

Frank Scholze
generaldirektion@dnb.de
Phone: +49 69 1525-1002

Background

For more than 100 years, the German National Library has been collecting, documenting and archiving all media works in text, image and sound format published in Germany since 1913 along with foreign publications about Germany or in the German language; these are then made available to the public. It offers a comprehensive range of services at its sites in Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main along with digital services that can be accessed all over the world insofar as this is permitted by copyright.

The German National Library also holds extensive special collections of inestimable value in the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 and the German Museum of Books and Writing. It regularly organises readings, exhibitions, presentations and concerts to draw attention to its treasures and promotes a culture of books, reading and music with more than 40 million media units, around 220,000 visitors a year to its premises in Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main, and a varied programme of prestigious events.