Yet just 10 years ago, the system as a whole was disjointed and difficult to navigate. Enter the Internet, which in a decade has reshaped the German public library system. Since its release in March 2000, more than 1,000 librarians have learned how to use the Internet for communication, research and customer service. Christian Hasiewicz, the project director for the Bertelsmann Foundation s public libraries division, has been in charge of the bibweb project since its inception. Assistant editor Chris Jones recently interviewed Hasiewicz about his experiences.
Online training is a growing market in Germany.
It showed that a lot of companies like DaimlerChrysler and SAP are using online learning. Nevertheless, providing a whole professional group, such as librarians, with a specific Web-based training program is an approach that is still rather rare in Germany. If you develop a technical solution that didn t exist before for example, our highly customized online training program one challenge is to stay within the scheduled time and budget. Time, especially, can be a critical issue when technical problems occur. In this project, we were able to meet this goal.