Handing over the keys to the Friedrichshagen storage facility of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
Press release from 06/30/2014
Today the keys were handed over for the first building at the SPK's new storage location, the Friedrichshagen storage magazine. In attendance were Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Günter Winands, Ministerial Director at the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Lothar Fehn Krestas, representative of the President of the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning, the architect Eberhard Wimmer and the heads of the three institutions that will use the building in future. The Director General of the Berlin State Library, Barbara Schneider-Kempf, the Director of the Ibero-American Institute, Barbara Göbel, and the Director of the bpk Picture Agency for Art, Culture and History, Hanns-Peter Frentz, welcomed the fact that the urgently needed building is now in operation and will relieve the pressure on the central locations.
What is currently the largest and most modern library storage facility in Germany has been built in Friedrichshagen. Its construction was urgently needed as the storage capacities of the Berlin State Library (SBB-PK) and the Ibero-American Institute (IAI) at Potsdamer Platz are completely exhausted. In the current first expansion stage of the storage repository, there is space for 6 million books as well as extensive special collections. In addition to optimally air-conditioned rooms for the valuable original holdings of the bpk picture agency, there is also a photo restoration workshop that can be used by other institutions of the foundation.
The construction and furnishing of the building were fully financed by the Federal Government. The building will provide sufficient space for the growing collections of the three users for at least the next two decades. At a later date, it can be extended cost-effectively in a modular design by two further expansion stages, which will almost double its space and storage capacity.
The new storage centre currently houses over 3.5 million volumes from the State Library and around 300,000 volumes from the Ibero-American Institute. The picture agency bpk is bringing together 12 million negatives and prints as well as bequests that were previously housed at different locations. The move of the IAI's holdings has already been completed and the picture agency will move its holdings to Friedrichshagen by autumn 2014. The relocation of the SBB-PK's holdings has been underway since mid-June and will take around a year.
There is no user operation in the storage depot. The collections that have been moved there can still be used to their full extent: requested materials are transported daily by lorry to the central locations. Some of them, especially journals, are also scanned and transmitted electronically, making them easy to reuse.
Friedrichshagen storage location
The site at Fürstenwalder Damm 388 in Berlin-Köpenick will serve as SPK's central storage location in future. A new building for depots and workshops of the National Museums in Berlin will also be built on the federally owned property in the immediate vicinity of the storage depot. This concentration of storage facilities, depots and workshops in Friedrichshagen is intended to relieve the pressure on centrally located sites of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, utilise expertise synergistically and make operating costs more economical. The site also offers sufficient space to be equipped for several decades of further growth in the collection.