Abstract

Library cooperation in Germany is a tradition that predates the emergence of internet. This is explained partly by the absence of a “classic” National Library, as a single central institution. This absence has been replaced by the three major German libraries, which have distributed among themselves the function of a national library. The other reason for this tradition is the Federal political system and the responsibility of each of the Federal States in cultural matters, including libraries. This meant that at both regional and interregional levels, there has traditionally been a solid cooperation, at least among scientific libraries. Later, the arrival of automation has facilitated the production of collective regional catalogues. With the entrance into the so-called “digital age”, the tendency to cooperation has been intensified, so that today one can talk about an “age of cooperation”. One example of the ease and assiduousness of this cooperation are the new services which, in most cases, supply several libraries together; others are the specialised virtual libraries, the consortium acquisition of digital media user licences, including national licences for certain items, and the cooperative creation of a long term national digital archive.