She who goes straight ahead does not always come far – a portrait of Antje Kellersohn
„Take the leap – is the advice of Antje Kellersohn, Director of the Freiburg University Library, to all those who are about to make a big decision. We have our conversation in her modern office, without any dusty oak bookshelves or creaky stepladders. There are several screens on her desk, their color and shape reminiscent of the facade of the University Library. „Take the leap“ are three simple but important words. Especially when it comes to finding the courage for a new direction. Like Antje Kellersohn dared to do.
The Director of the University Library is a chemist by training. She took the first steps in her scientific career in the 1990s as a doctoral student at the University of Siegen. She researched nanocrystalline copper, tiny crystallites consisting of just a few atomic layers. She remembers how loud it was in the lab, with tubes, cables and displays everywhere. Frightening? Perhaps at first, admits Antje Kellersohn. A colleague asked her during her first few days whether she could handle a soldering iron. „Yes, I can!“ she replied boldly – then the thought occurred to her: would he have asked a male colleague the same question? For many years, she was the only woman in her research group. However, she never made a big deal of it. She simply had to assert herself, just like her male colleagues.
The story of how Antje Kellersohn came to the library begins with the sentence „I’ll go into a little more detail and tell you why“. She needed Japanese patent specifications for her dissertation. Nowadays? No problem! Search in the online catalog, use one of the many licenses from the University Library, have it translated via DeepL. But these simple solutions didn’t exist back then. The young doctoral student suddenly found herself behind the scenes at the library, where she got to know the world of academic subject librarians. She enthusiastically decided on a rather unusual path at the time – from a doctorate in natural sciences to a library traineeship. In doing so, she decided against going into industry or research. „In my opinion, this creates an exciting biography,“ says Antje Kellersohn. Those who reorient themselves can also contribute their knowledge and experience in new ways; and her good IT skills came in particularly handy in the library sector.
A university library is like the brain of a university. This is where all the knowledge is stored, waiting to be accessed, used, and expanded. Together with her team, Antje Kellersohn coordinates this brain – which is home to almost three and a half million media units in Freiburg -, manages more than sixty specialist libraries and balances between researchers, students, teaching staff and external users. What does it mean to create permanent access to knowledge so that science can function at all?
One the one hand, says Antje Kellersohn, it is about creating a place where people enjoy working. She came to Freiburg when the construction of the current University Library began, so there was a lot of new territory. And what does the director do? When it came to the interior design, she first invited the entire staff to the canteen to discuss suggestions. She had also been in contact with students right from the start. For Antje Kellersohn, the library is a „we“. On the other hand, it is about making knowledge usable in the long term. But, what does sustainable mean when it comes to knowledge?
Antje Kellersohn smiles and answers that it depends on who you ask. „We have ancient papyri, stone tablets, clay tablets from the Roman Empire, we have early medieval manuscripts“, but also a gigantic „jumble of data“ that is generated by high-energy physics, for example. Large server capacities that store this data, as well as standardized temperature and humidity conditions for parchment manuscripts, are in stark contrast to operating a building as energy-efficiently as possible. Another area of tension for Antje Kellersohn. She also conducts tough negotiations with the big players: Springer Nature, Elsevier and Wiley. In order to reach license agreements with these publishing groups, libraries across Germany have joined forces in the DEAL project. Antje Kellersohn was the spokesperson for the project group for many years and managed the project office.
Doesn’t her day need more than 24 hours doing all of this? Kellersohn laughs. She has been trying to change this for 30 years – so far without success. She emphasizes: „Nothing would be possible without my team.“ She couldn’t do it alone and the University Library is clearly the result of teamwork.
This is how a graduate chemist with a doctorate in nanocrystalline copper comes to work on the digitization of centuries-old mystical books. Not a contradiction for Antje Kellersohn. After all, a university library brings together a wide variety of sciences. That’s why she has a second piece of advice: „Don’t let yourself be pigeonholed!“
Portrait by Theresa Mayer
Teresa Mayer still has one foot in her Bachelor’s degree, where she is studying History, Philosophy and English. With the other, she is working towards a Master’s degree, where she will focus on History in the hope of turning her passion into a career. She finds a balance to her studies by dancing (currently prefering salsa), at concerts or in a café with friends. Her slight accent in English is owed to a surprisingly sunny semester abroad in Ireland.