History

Historical information about the library is almost impossible to find in the museum's archive, as the historical perspective was very much orientated towards the scientific departments and their collections. Overlaps with the presentation of the general history of the institute are therefore unavoidable. What is certain, however, is that the library originated from the private library of the museum's founder, Alexander Koenig. His extensive passion for collecting extended not only to bird skins and other animal specimens, which he brought back from his research trips to Africa, the Canary Islands and the Arctic Ocean, but also to the scientific literature of his time. After the death of his wealthy father Leopold in 1903, he was also able to use his considerable financial resources to purchase fundamental systematic zoological literature. The oldest work in the museum's possession is the bird volume of Konrad Gesner's Historia Animalium (Allgemeines Thierbuch) from 1557. A brief tour of the RARA department quickly reveals how valuable this early collecting frenzy was for the library. The works, which were still relatively inexpensive at the time, can no longer be acquired on today's budgets.

In order to house his extensive collection and literature, Alexander Koenig began building his natural history museum on 3 September 1913. After more than 20 years of construction, which included a world war, occupation and the Great Depression, he was finally able to open his Zoological Research Institute and Museum in 1934. This date can therefore also be regarded as the official birth of the library. Most of the literature was initially housed in Alexander Koenig's spacious study, the so-called Ornithological Library.

After the war, the museum became the responsibility of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the library was endowed with a library budget. Although this budget was modest - a situation that has not changed much to this day - the library continued to grow steadily through the acquisition of bequests, especially from the museum's own collections. Important bequests and purchases of closed collections of renowned zoologists were, for example, the libraries of Günther and Jochen Niethammer, E. G. Franz Saur, Hans Wolters and Martin Eisentraut, to name just the most important. In addition, the remaining assets of the Koenig family flowed into the Alexander Koenig Foundation, which has supported the library for many years with significant sums for the purchase of literature.

However, the lack of a specialist librarian and the inadequate facilities proved to be an obstacle to even more favourable development. Thus, for almost 25 years, all library matters were handled on a part-time basis by academic staff with widely differing views and interests. In the meantime, most of the holdings were completely inadequately housed, as they were spread over several rooms for reasons of space. This fragmentation in terms of space, but also in terms of subject matter, led to the organisational structure that has remained to this day. The main library - located on the first floor of the main building - is the central service facility for a total of nine decentralised departmental and section libraries.

At the end of the 1960s, an initial success was achieved, at least in the area of personnel. In January 1971, the first full-time librarian took up her post - a clear indication of the enormous growth in the collection, which could no longer be managed on a part-time basis by the academic departments. In addition to the professionalisation of business operations and the development of a classification system for the main library, the library staff - another assistant position was created soon afterwards - devoted themselves above all to the development of the alphabetical card catalogue.

The computerisation of the museum at the end of the 1980s ushered in a new era for the library. The decision to use the CDS/ISIS library information system and the employment of two ABM staff at the beginning of the 1990s made it possible to convert the conventional card catalogue into a computerised online catalogue. This was an essential prerequisite for all future developments.

Much has changed since the times of Alexander Koenig. Although the value of information (nowhere more evident than in the "scientific community") has not changed, the possibilities of finding, evaluating and making it accessible have changed dramatically in the face of the new information media. Specialised academic libraries must follow this development and provide new forms of information in a user-oriented and efficient manner. Based on the electronic library model developed by librarians, the ZFMK specialised library developed the concept: "The ZFMK library: A research library on the way to becoming an electronic library." Reflecting Alexander Koenig's guiding principle that the museum should be equally committed to science and an interested public, the ZFMK library of the 21st century will provide extended electronic and, in some cases, digital access to its information repositories.

An important initial spark for this project was the decision in 1996 by the German Research Foundation (DFG)to include the library in its funding programme for special libraries as a research library of outstanding importance. The focus of this support until 2001 was the expansion of the ornithological sub-library.

This ambitious project required complete network capability, i.e. the connection of an in-house network (LAN) to the Internet functionality - an essential feature of the Electronic Library. After lengthy preparatory work, the Local Area Network at the ZFMK was finally put into operation in 1997. This initially gave the scientific departments and external visitors the opportunity to carry out research in the library's catalogues (monographs, offprints, journals as test versions) from their workstations or from a library computer.

But even the electronic library cannot yet prevent libraries from suffering from space and room problems. Despite the beginnings of a virtual library at the ZFMK, very real space constraints have impaired the positive development outlined above in the past. Just as the young Alexander Koenig's plan to build a museum to house his collections matured almost a century ago (a storeroom provided by his father in the greenhouse of today's Villa Hammerschmidt very quickly became too small), the ZFMK also received a replacement and extension building - the Clas M. Naumann Building - in which the library found a new home in 2006. Together with the archive and library holdings of the Biohistoricum and the Natural History Society of the Rhineland and Westphalia, the ZFMK library was united in a new building on the Poppelsdorf university campus in 2025.

To summarise, it can be said that at the beginning of the 21st century, the library is still on its way from a traditional to an electronic or, to some extent, digital library. (To be continued)