Band 31, Heft 3

The HeBIS network carried out an online survey from December 13 2010 to January 21 2011 to evaluate the interface of the catalogues and catalogue portals of its member libraries. Altogether 16 various types of libraries were prepared to participate. The HeBIS staff was supported in its conception and performance by a student project group, which was participating in a library-specific study as part of the Bachelor degree course in Information Science and Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt. Almost 22,000 completed questionnaires were returned; this number surpassed all expectations. Independent of the individual evaluations of each library a comprehensive overview of the results is given here. To sum up: the classic tasks of online catalogues, namely to facilitate an effective retrieval of the entire library stock and to give information about the location and actual availability of media, still have priority for the user despite being in the times of Internet and the Social Web.

The law on archival matters that was amended in the German state of North-Rhine-Westphalia in the year 2010 grants a stronger anchoring to the area of safeguarding concerning archival materials. The discussion was initiated by the collapse of the municipal archives of the City of Cologne in 2009. This was the reason to proof, which other rules and standards touch the tasks of protecting and preserving cultural heritage and the standards for disaster planning, especially in archives, libraries and museums. At the end of this contribution some proposals are made to develop further instruments of prevention to safeguard the cultural heritage.

It is characterized what 'understanding' of texts in fact does mean and how it can be organized in complex media structures within large enterprises or similar institutions. In this context some of the most widespread errors about language based communication as well as about instruments and media are corrected. This is the basis to accept the understanding of texts as a strategic task of an enterprise which can only be solved in a long term. Notably it must be understood that language and technical media based questions only together will create the problem which has to be solved for each enterprise or other more or less complex organizations. Well performed internal and external communication is the basis for all other entrepreneurial or institutional activities.