History of the Library

On 28 September 1998 Frithjof Kühn, then Chief Administrative Officer of the Rhein-Sieg District (Oberkreisdirektor) and now District Chief Executive (Landrat), and Monika Lohr, Deputy Clerk of the District Council (Kreisdirektorin), Prof. Dr. Hubert Severin, then President (Rektor) and cofounder of the University of Applied Sciences, as well as Chancellor Hans Stender signed a cooperation agreement between the Rhein-Sieg District and the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences. This agreement aimed to incorporate the public District Library into the academic Library of the University of Applied Sciences, i.e. to merge the two Libraries together in terms of space and organisation. This ambitious, relatively unique project started on 1 November 1999: on that day the new University and District Library commenced operations on the Sankt Augustin and Rheinbach campuses.

As the two Libraries merged together, the range of services provided by the Library had to be redefined and adapted to its extended range of customers. To provide the collections of the cooperative Library with a unique and distinctive profile, the holdings of the old District Library from then on focussed on particular subjects, which are oriented towards the range of subjects offered by the University of Applied Sciences. The high-quality non-fiction literature of the new District collection not only perfectly complements the professional and specialist literature of the scientific collection, but also the holdings of the public community libraries. It became one of the most important activities of the new Library to support these libraries in manifold ways, e.g.  in the areas of Inter-Library Loans or training courses.