Taking stock: one year of mobile work models

Whether regularly as "alternating telework" or sporadically as "mobile working": 2022 saw the roll-out of a service agreement on mobile work models at the German National Library. Implementing it is a balancing act between the DNB's aspiration to make its physical and digital collections available to users in the library reading rooms on a daily basis, and the wish expressed by many employees to be more flexible in terms of work location. However, this balancing act appears to have been a success. Feedback from 2023.

Staff whose tasks allow them to work at another location use the opportunity for mobile working up to 60% of the time. By offering more flexible solutions enabling staff to reconcile their career and private lives, the DNB has become a more attractive employer. Almost 25% of staff use the "alternating telework" option. The opportunity for "mobile working", i.e. the variant which permits work from other locations on specific occasions, has been well received by staff and management alike and is also helping to facilitate the reconciliation of work and private life.

How colleagues benefited from the regulation of working hours in 2023:

Leadership in the digital age: DNB@Campus Management

Nothing stays the same in our constantly changing world of work. This dynamic also calls for a high degree of flexibility and openness to change on the part of DNB employees. Management staff have a decisive role to play in this context. This is why 2023 saw the launch of DNB@Campus Management, an extensive qualification programme from which all the German National Library's management staff will benefit over the next two-and-a-half years.

Photo: Stephan Jockel

Home office, hybrid teams, challenges to hierarchical structures, more flexible work-time models and the ongoing digitisation of work processes and services: the working world is undergoing rapid change. Digitisation activities at the DNB have accelerated and been cemented as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Management staff are undergoing extensive further training to ensure that they can give their teams the best possible support when dealing with the challenges these changes entail. Some of the aims of this professional development programme are:

• To help management staff reflect on their understanding of leadership, create a shared awareness of how we want to work now and in the future, and define the role played by management staff in this context. This is true to the motto "Together. Leadership. Development".
• To familiarise management staff with "new work" concepts and lay the foundations of a management culture which allows employees to develop and realise their full potential.
• To supplement theoretical and practical knowledge with up-to-date management expertise and give managers the tools they need to take on the changes and demands of the analogue and digital world of work while actively shaping them in a solution-oriented, decisive manner.
• To face the upcoming generational change with suitably trained and strengthened management staff.
• To promote (cross-location) dialogue and consulting between managers by communicating and using appropriate methods.
• To establish a sensitive, empowering approach to staff diversity as a matter of course.

Inauguration of the Thematic House “Digital Objects“

Flexible, needs-oriented and sustainable: this is how the DNB's information and communication technology should be. The project "Strategic IT Management" was initiated with this in mind. The key metaphor: an architectural office with its own artisans. In 2023, this vision was expanded still further, with the first visible results. In April 2023, the Thematic House "Digital Objects" embarked on a two-year project phase, integrating staff from various departments.

This house brings together all topics relating to digital objects. These encompass the technical and functional foundations of all import processes – both for digital objects and the objects digitised by the DNB itself – as well as web harvesting, access to all the objects collected and long-term digital archiving. Considerations relating to the use of non-physical media (online resources) for projects and processes – e.g. the digital humanities – have been allotted a fixed place in this organisational structure for the first time.

The rooms are being furnished

The first few months were spent actually designing the house. The necessary structures were developed and the roles agreed. All those involved worked together to develop a roadmap charting the implementation of the most important tasks. Everyone received reciprocal insights into each work area to ensure that they felt at ease. A degree of early success has already become apparent: besides coordinating the planning, there has been a growth in mutual understanding. The pooling of tasks in one place also clearly shows the complexity and diversity of the tasks associated with the topic.

Step by step to the finishing line

Along with the topping-out ceremony for the "Digital Objects" house, further steps were taken as part of the implementation phase for the project as a whole – in full accord with the planned iterative approach. A service catalogue for the supply of IT services has been developed in the field of action "IT Portfolio". The first version was finished at the end of 2023. This must be followed by an ongoing verification and maintenance process.

IT staff and budget resources are gaining in importance overall. This calls for guidelines and rules governing their use, i.e. a strategy. The IT sourcing strategy is part of the IT strategy. It determines which IT services are rendered by the DNB's internal IT resources and which are procured from external service providers. Strategy is handled in a field of action with the same name. A strategy paper was also compiled in this area at the end of the year. The newly created portfolio catalogue has already been used to develop and structure services.

The relevant IT processes were initially collected in the field of action "Processes". Next, the most important processes were selected and the first process profiles created. Over the course of 2024, these will be developed into viable target processes with external support.

What comes next?

Along with "Digital Objects" the concept also provides for the "construction" of four more thematic houses, i.e. "Metadata", "Physical Objects", "Administration" and "Education". The thematic house "Metadata" has entered the preparatory phase, in which an internal structure will be defined. This will largely encompass four major subject areas: metadata input, metadata provision, metadata storage and metadata processing. Metadata quality is considered to be an overarching theme. This is what distinguishes the new house's interior architecture from that of the "Digital Objects" house. However, the concept allows for this freedom and deliberately specifies only a few minimum requirements. The themes and roles developed in the house set the stage for future considerations. These provide for the gradual integration of the houses into the organisational structure as part of a more comprehensive organisational development process. The "Metadata" house will pave the way.

Social Media: Turning 2 into 5

2023 saw considerable progress at the German National Library with regard to social media. LinkedIn and later Mastodon had already been added to the online portfolio in 2022. The DNB has also had an Instagram presence since July 2023. 2023 also saw the Strategic Development and Communication staff unit start training employees in the use of social media.

Posting from work with the employer's backing: over the course of five modules, DNB Insiders – staff from all areas of the library – acquired useful information on media logic, topic identification, reach tactics and legal frameworks in social media. The first three insiders then started posting on LinkedIn in the summer. The decision to start with LinkedIn was mainly based on target group considerations – this channel is intended for anyone who is interested in gaining insights into the German National Library's world of work and is seeking informed dialogue.

The first institution-wide call for participants in the second training programme, starting in January 2024, followed in the winter. Six more colleagues signed up as a result. The goal is to offer more authentic insights into the work and concerns of a national library

Brand new: DNB on Instagram

During the first DNB hackathon, staff in the user service areas hacked a social media strategy designed to strengthen ties with users. The DNB accordingly launched an Instagram account in July 2023. This provides useful information for reading room visitors in particular on registering to use the library, ordering media, using online media, the atmosphere in the reading rooms, reading room collections and opening/closing times. It also contains general information on the German National Library and news from the German Exile Archive. The German Museum of Books and Writing has maintained a presence on the photo and video platform since 2020.

Photo: Fanni Fröhlich

Foto: Stefanie Schust

New service, new priorities

Photo: Alexander Paul Englert

@DNB_Aktuelles was launched on Mastodon at the end of 2022 to accommodate the changes brought about by the transformation of Twitter into X and to offer followers an alternative. In 2023, priority was given to Mastodon as the DNB's primary microblogging service.
 
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Japan, Korea and Europe – International dialogue

Similar tasks and challenges: many national libraries find that dialogue pays off. 2023 saw colleagues from Korea and Japan visit the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig. A virtual meeting took place with colleagues from Norway. The main topic: the neverending upheaval which national libraries have to contend with – the shifting publication landscape, changing production techniques, new distribution channels and the use of cutting-edge technologies.

The national libraries move between these conflicting priorities with close attention to their respective legal bases. These are expressed for example in the expansion of collections, in data management and in indexing. There was accordingly plenty to talk about during the meetings with international visitors from the National Diet Library in Japan, the Korean National Library in South Korea and the Nasjonalbiblioteket in Norway. In all, they travelled more than 18,000 km by air from their respective locations to exchange information and experiences and consider comparable challenges from various perspectives.

Intensive exchange of experiences: visitors from Tokyo

One international exchange with Takeshi Osako took place over several days in February 2023. The director of the legal department at the National Diet Library in Tokyo visited both of the German National Library's locations. Several different exchange formats were organised in advance due to the sheer volume of topics for discussion. The legally regulated mandatory deposit of media was just one of the subjects addressed; others included data protection, the Freedom of Information Act and the technical processes required to keep electronic content available in the long term. The provision of unrestricted access to archived objects and the special protective conditions required for their use were also discussed.

Legal bases in Germany and Korea

In contrast, discussions with colleagues from the Korean National Library focused first and foremost on the implementation of legal requirements in the area of collection expansion, particularly the synchronised collection of physical and non-physical media with due attention to technical possibilities. This key topic also prompted the two colleagues from South Korea to visit both of the German National Library's locations. While the visit to Frankfurt focused on the particularities of building collections of physical media, the trip to Leipzig dealt with the specifics of collecting non-physical media.

Virtual dialogue with the Nasjonalbiblioteket

A virtual meeting with colleagues from Norway's national library took place in December 2023. This addressed the reasons for indexing single issues, the individual steps taken and the ways in which this task is currently handled. Each issue of a loose-leaf publication, journal or newspaper is now given its own specific shelf mark. The German National Library implemented this fundamental change in 2021. Besides improving perspectives on indexing, this creates greater transparency regarding the availability of individual issues and ensures that they are optimally shelved in the stacks. The virtual meeting is set to continue next year with an exchange of information on mandatory deposit copies at the Nasjonalbiblioteket and the German National Library.

Dialogue at European level

2023 was also Frank Scholze's second year in office as chairman of the Conference of European Libraries (CENL). One of the highlights of the year for CENL members is always the annual meeting at one of the member libraries. The annual meeting at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris focused on the important topic of sustainability. The wide-ranging contributions on this issue were recently published under the title "All roads lead to Rome or: National Libraries on their ways to sustainability".