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University and District Library

Cooperation (library)

Two libraries under one roof - when university and district come together
Gründung der Hochschul- und Kreisbibliothek Bonn-Rhein-Sieg

On 28 September 1998, the then District Director Frithjof Kühn and the District Director Monika Lohr as well as the then Founding Rector Prof. Dr Hubert Severin and the Chancellor Hans Stender signed a cooperation agreement between the Rhine-Sieg District and the Rhine-Sieg University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences). The aim of this agreement was to integrate the public library of the district into the academic library of the University of Applied Sciences and to merge the two libraries both organisationally and spatially. The starting signal for this ambitious project, which is relatively unique in the German library system, was 1 November 1999: on this day, the new university and district library began operating at the two locations in Sankt Augustin and Rheinbach.

With the integration of the district library into the university library, the library's services had to be redefined and adapted to the expanded range of customers. In order to give the holdings of the cooperative library a concise, unmistakable profile, the collection areas of the old district library were concentrated on certain focal points oriented towards the university's subject canon. The upscale non-fiction literature of the new district collection offers an optimal complement not only to the specialist and special literature of the academic collection, but also to the holdings of the public community libraries. At the same time, supporting these in many ways, for example in the areas of inter-library loans or training courses, became another important activity of the new library.

The Rhein-Sieg-Kreis also supports the cultural commitment of the library. In 2000, our reading series "Guest on the Sofa..." celebrated its premiere. premiered. Since then we have had many evenings with great names of literature.