Albert Predeek

Albert Predeek (born August 12, 1883 in Meinerzhagen , † February 10, 1956 in Berlin ) was a German librarian . As a representative of the German documentation movement , he campaigned for the systematic indexing and documentation of technical literature. He was a pioneer of technical-mechanical processes to streamline library work processes. As head of the library at the Technical University of Berlin (from 1929), he set up an information center for technical and scientific literature there from 1933. As a result, the TH Berlin library established itself as a central technical library in Germany until the Second World War . From 1947 to 1951 Predeek headed the Jena University Library .

Life

The son of a magistrate and brother of the writer Franz Predeek (1881-1965) and the cultural historian Rudolf Predeek (1886-1950) studied history , philosophy , mathematics and geography at the Universities of Münster and Munich, as well as law at the , after graduating from the Realgymnasium in Münster University of Göttingen . He received his doctorate in 1906 in Münster under Georg Erler on “Pope Gregory VIII, King Heinrich IV and the German princes in the investiture dispute”. In 1908 he passed his state examination and completed his training as a trainee at the University Library in Münster and from October 1910 in Göttingen with Richard Pietschmann (1851-1932). Predeek passed the specialist examination in Berlin in 1912, was appointed assistant at the Prussian State Library in Berlin , promoted to assistant librarian in 1914 and to librarian in 1916. As an officer in a Bavarian field artillery unit, he took part in the First World War.

In 1920 he was given leave to go to Göttingen . In 1922 he took over as successor to Paul Trommsdorff (1870-1940) the management of the library of the Technical University of Danzig . In 1929 he succeeded Carl Diesch (1880–1957) as head of the library at the TH Berlin , where from 1931 he also held a teaching position for library science .

Predeek studied foreign librarianship on numerous trips that took him to Holland , Sweden , Denmark , Oslo and Great Britain, as well as to Switzerland , Czechoslovakia and the USA . From February to September 1937 he taught German librarianship as a visiting professor at Iowa State College in Ames (Iowa) and gained practical experience at the College Library.

In 1941 Predeek was one of the founders of the German Society for Documentation . The information center of the TH Berlin under Predeek worked on the technical part for the "Referatenblatt" of the evaluation center of the technical and economic world press, which appeared from 1942 , in which contents of articles of the foreign technical and economic press including patents were offered.

Predeek remained the library director until 1945, but after the library of the TH Berlin was largely destroyed in an Allied air raid on November 22, 1943, from 1944 onwards he mainly stayed in the library in Roßla .

Predeek's reinstatement as library director at TH Berlin was rejected by the Berlin magistrate . He was accused of having worked on the report sheet, which had served important military goals. In 1946, Predeek applied to the University of Jena as library manager and had to prove that he had been far removed from National Socialism and not a member of the NSDAP or one of its branches. Colleagues and employees testified to his distance from National Socialism. In November 1947 he took over the management of the Jena University Library, but was dismissed without notice in November 1951 for “ideological diversion”. He moved to West Berlin , where he taught as an honorary professor for library science at the Free University of Berlin .

Act

Predeek is one of the representatives of the German documentation movement , which dealt practically and theoretically with the problems of documentation. With his lecture "The Libraries and Technology" on the 23rd Librarians' Day in 1927, he encouraged the establishment of a commission for technical libraries and technical literature, which was supposed to develop measures to meet the need for technical literature by organizing and coordinated utilization of the available material to satisfy. In doing so, he endeavored, albeit without lasting success, to cooperate with industry and technology and to connect all forces active in the field of librarianship and literature reference. In the commission, he and Paul Trommsdorff, the head of the library of the TH Hannover , set up an agency for the reference of sources at the German Association of Technical and Scientific Associations in Berlin.

In 1933 Predeek succeeded in setting up an “information center for technical and scientific literature” at the TH Berlin with the help of industry.

“This position is used for technical research and practice, primarily technical companies, associations and institutes that want to find out about the status of a problem, a production process or a patent question, etc. from the literature. In such cases, the information center provides references to literature, especially from national and international journals and patent literature, both from the old and the more recent. Incoming inquiries are processed by theoretically and practically experienced engineers, using library technology methods in such a way that the relevant literature is collected, viewed, checked and sent as "literature research" for a moderate fee "

- Albert Predeek

Even during the Second World War , foreign scientific and technical journals were sometimes acquired through intelligence services and mainly evaluated via the information center at the TH Berlin and the Hamburg World Economic Archive and distributed via a monthly journal from 1942 to November 1944.

In mid-1943, the information office stopped working on the paper. At this point in time, however, it was already foreseeable that the information center would in future work closely with the Reich Research Council (RFR). Predeek was appointed on May 17, 1943 by Rudolf Mentzel as head of the "card index and information center of the executive advisory board in the Reich Research Council" and thus a Mentzel directly subordinate clerk to the executive advisory board of the RFR. His information service was supposed to answer the question: "By whom, where, about what, with what means, with what results is research currently being carried out?" The first thing to do was to set up a central index of researchers, research institutes and research areas. In addition, a comprehensive bibliographical service was to be set up so that the journal literature of the TWWA could continue to be made available to the library of the TH. The work was financed by the Reich Research Council. After the TH library was destroyed, from 1944 work continued in the library's alternative quarters at Castle Roßla , and a printing shop was bought in Roßla. The index was completed by December 1944.

Ever since he took office in Berlin in 1929, Predeek had endeavored to use technical-mechanical processes to rationalize work processes, such as an addressing machine (Adrema) for the production of catalog cards and the production of title lists, in order to be able to evaluate and catalog more literature. The addressing machine made it possible to reproduce the titles in list printing and to create selection lists based on factual aspects. It was therefore the first mechanized documentation for bibliographically independent writings.

With the support of the companies Carl Zeiss and Schott , Predeek also founded an information center for technology and natural sciences at the university library in Jena , whose activities essentially corresponded to the activities of the information center at the TH Berlin.

Fonts

• Pope Gregory VII, King Heinrich IV and the German princes in the investiture dispute. Coppenrath, Münster 1907.
• To organize the scientific service at the Prussian libraries. ZfB, Leipzig 1921.
• The libraries and the technology. 1927.
• Visits to the library of a learned traveler in the early 18th century. In: Central Journal for Libraries. 45 (1928) 1928, pp. 221-265, 342-354, 393-407.
• The location of the German university libraries. sn, Leipzig 1929.
• The Adrema machine as an organizational tool in library operations. Organization, Berlin 1930.
• The mechanical production and evaluation of the technical-scientific literature reference. Muusses, Purmerend 1930.
• The lending control of the library with the help of the flat file. Muusses, Purmerend 1931.
• Modern English librarianship. Harrassowitz, Leipzig 1933.
• The American Library. Idea and design Harrassowitz, Leipzig 1938.
• Contemporary Problems of American Librarianship . In: Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, 57 (1940), pp. 445-461.
• History of Libraries in Great Britain and the United States of North America. O. Harrassowitz, Leipzig 1940. = F. Milkau (Ed.): Handbuch der Bibliothekswissenschaft , Vol. 3, History of the Libraries . (1940), pp. 855-975.
  • Translation: A History of Libraries in Great Britain and North America. Translated by Lawrence S. Thompson. , Chicago 1947.
• Technical University of Berlin. In: The German technical universities: their founding and historical development. 1941, pp. 25-44.
• The Jena University Library. 1945-1950, a five-year report. In: Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 64 (1950), H. 7/8.
• Library science as a discipline and university subject. In: From the world of books: Festgabe for the 70th birthday of Georg Leyh. 1950, pp. 169-184.
• A hundred years of free public libraries. In: Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 65 (1951), H. 1/2.
• From English libraries. Observations on a study trip. In: Libri: international journal of libraries and information services. 5, No. 3 (1954), pp. 201-222.
• The English libraries since the Reformation. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1957.

literature

• Elke Behrends: Technical-scientific documentation in Germany from 1900 to 1945. With special consideration of the relationship between library and documentation. Harrasowitz, Wiesbaden 1995
• Johannes Buder:  Predeek, Albert. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , pp. 681 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Alexandra Habermann, Rainer Klemmt, Frauke Siefkes: Lexicon of German Scientific Librarians 1925–1980 . Klostermann, Frankfurt / Main 1985.
• Hermann Neubert: In memoriam Albert Predeek . In: Libri 6 (1956), pp. 387-390, ISSN  1865-8423 (online), ISSN  0024-2667 (print), doi : 10.1515 / libr.1956.6.1-4.387 .
• Helmut Sontag (ed.), Georg Malz (author): From the chronicle of the university library. Technical University of Berlin 1884–1984. University Library d. Techn. Univ., Dept. Publ., Berlin 1985.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Helmut Sontag (ed.), Georg Malz (author): From the chronicle of the university library. Technical University of Berlin 1884–1984 . University Library d. Techn. Univ., Abt. Publ., Berlin 1985, p. 278.
2. ↑ Alexandra Habermann: Wanderer between two worlds - About the inner turmoil of people in the Cold War . In: Peter Vodosek and Wolfgang Schmitz (eds.): Libraries, books and other media in the time of the Cold War . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2005, p. 98; quoted after Johannes Buder:  Predeek, Albert. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , pp. 681 f. ( Digitized version ).
3. ↑ ^{a b} Wolfgang Zick (ed.): Exhibition 125 years of knowledge in the center. University library of the Technical University of Berlin, October 28, 2009 to January 30, 2010 . University Press of the TU Berlin, Berlin 2009, p. 27.
4. ↑ Helmut Sontag (ed.), Georg Malz (author): From the chronicle of the university library. Technical University of Berlin 1884–1984. University Library d. Techn. Univ., Abt. Publ., Berlin 1985, p. 131.
5. ↑ Elke Behrends: Technical-scientific documentation in Germany from 1900 to 1945. With special consideration of the relationship between library and documentation. Harrasowitz, Wiesbaden 1995, pp. 201f.