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Since May 2013, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German research community) supports pilot projects dealing with the digitalization of historic newspapers at four libraries in Germany, one of them the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen (State and university library Bremen). At the same time, the Zeitschriftendatenbank (ZDB, journal data bank) is extended and the DFG viewers for newspapers are adapted. The participating libraries not only enlarge the number of digitalized newspapers significantly, but work out standards of newspaper digitalization which will also be relevant for future digitalization projects. The SuUB Bremen's pilot project aims at digitalizing all German-language newspapers of the 17th century which are more completely availiable here than anywhere else. The newspapers are presented on the digital collections portal of the SuUB Bremen (http://brema.suub.uni-bremen.de/) based on the software Visual Library. This paper represents newspaper digitalization in the context of the DFG's current support policy. Apart from emphasizing the standard and structure forming aims of the pilot projects, the specific orientation and the peculiarities of the Bremen project are the subject of the following report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyse and compare the opening hours of 50 randomly selected university libraries in Austria, Germany, Canada and the USA. Thus we want to answer five concrete questions concerning opening hours, such as ''Is there a correlation between opening hours and size of a library?'' The study reveals for example that larger libraries have extended opening hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For planning library conservation measures like mass deacidification, microfilming or digitalisation in acidic book collections, it is nessessary to carry out a damage survey first. This survey should, on the one hand, make it possible to assess the extent of the damage and the suitability of the books for certain kinds of preservation, and on the other hand give direct access to the individual damaged book. With the Göttingen State and University Library as an example, it will be examined if and how a damage survey could be carried out in principle. For this a model is outlined as to how such a damage survey could be carried out. It is discussed if an item-by-item survey or a sample is more suitable, and a damage questionnaire is presented. Furthermore, the paper indicates how the questionnaire can be transformed into a database. Finally the possible course of the survey including preparations and evaluations is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]