BiblioCON 2024 – Between the Future of Librarianship and Librarianship as a Female Profession

BiblioCON, until a year ago still called Bibliothekartag, is the largest national training event for the library profession and was held for the first time in Marburg in 1900. From Tuesday, the 4^th of June 2024 to Friday, the 7^th of June 2024, the conference was organised for the 112th time this year by the Association of German Librarians and the Professional Association of Information Librarians. The chosen venue was the Congress Center Hamburg, which is the largest and most modern conference centre in Germany. In addition to numerous presentations on a wide range of topics, there was also a company fair to visit, which brought together the biggest players in the library world. For example, Wiley, Hugendubel, the German Digital Library and many more.

As already mentioned, the topics of the presentations were particularly broad, so that there was something for every area of interest. For example, there were presentations on library strategies, accessibility, cooperative services, bibliometrics, digitisation and open access. Some lectures were held in two languages. The language of the presentation or the presentation slides were in English. There were also various lecture formats. Some were limited to the presentation of their topics and then the opportunity to exchange questions and comments, but hands-on labs were also offered.

The conference days were filled with numerous lecture series. These usually lasted between one and a half and two hours and were divided into 3 to 4 individual presentations on the relevant topic. After each lecture there was the opportunity to address the speakers to ask questions or make comments.

Since the BiblioCON tickets for almost all participants were paid for with money from the Gender in Teaching Fund of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, it seemed sensible to start an investigation into the gender distribution of, for example, the lecture series moderators, the speakers or the requests to speak after the lectures as part of this conference. In 2024, the profession of librarian is still considered a female profession, as around 75% of people working in libraries are female. [1] It could now be concluded that they should therefore also be more represented and visible at a specialist conference.

The figures show that women and men took on the moderation equally often (four women and four men moderated eight lecture series). But that's where the equality ends. There were 15 male speakers for every 25 lectures, but only 10 female speakers. What is striking here is that it is mostly personalities from management levels or those who hold important positions in libraries who give the lectures. In the past, positions in the higher library service were occupied by more men and professions in the middle or higher service were seen more as women's areas. As these historically grown structures have only been broken for a few decades and often only hesitantly, it is often still men who are in charge of libraries. Another reason for male dominance appears to lie in the topic of technical innovations in libraries, as IT areas are still a male field of work today and are therefore also presented by men. [2] Also, only 38 women spoke up after the presentations with a question or comment, compared to 55 male conference participants. Where are all these smart and important women who carry the library world in numbers at these moments? Why are they being pushed into the background by men? Unfortunately, the topic of gender equality in the everyday working life of librarians is currently not discussed at all during their studies, which is why many young people may not even be aware of the inequalities.

In conclusion, BiblioCON is a great opportunity for students to gain an insight into their future field of work and to recognise the tasks and new challenges that need to be overcome. It was also impressive to see how open everyone at the conference was to learning new things, accepting criticism and growing together. The specialised library community consists of many personalities of all age groups, with whom one can network excellently at such a conference. For this reason, we aim to attend BiblioCon in 2025 and highly recommend it to all other library science students.

The excursion took place in the summer semester 2024 as part of the EW BiblioCon 2024 course under the direction of Prof Dr Ulrike Wuttke took place.

A report by Heidi Frey.

[1] Julia Bartlewski, „Erhebung zum Frauenanteil in Leitungspositionen an deutschen Bibliotheken“, LIBREAS. Library Ideas, Nr. 43 (2023) (2023): 39.
[2] „Klassischer Frauenberuf?“, Frauen in Kultur & Medien (blog), 12. October 2022.