Today, I had an oral exam in "library law" (comprises copyright law, media law, monumental protection, data protection, university organizational law...) which I passed with distinction, although having started to learn as usual on Saturday. Yes! By passing this exam, I finished the so-called "Grundausbildung für den Bibliotheks-, Informations- und Dokumentationsdienst" (~ basic education for people working in library & information science) provided by the Austrian National Library. I had only to do the legal thingies (constitutional law, administrative law, labour law, library law) - I was given credit for everything else because I had learned it before at FHIB.
Doing courses at the Austrian National Library is very nice... they have nice premises and very good lecturers. The seminars within the basic education costs 24 € per day for guest students like me as I didn't attend the whole training.

"allzu große Vortrefflichkeit"

Yesterday, I spent a few hours browsing through older issues of the "Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen". I found a lot of articles about the occupational image, job descriptions, troubles with salaries... Especially interesting to me are the texts about female librarians. For example, in 1939 Ernst Koch wrote that women librarians had a bad memory, that they weren't familiar with technical-scientific bibliographies and that they were incapable of accounting. His conclusion: He is proud of NOT having any women in the clerical grade in "his" library.
In the next issue, another male librarian, Otto Glauning, presented his view about female librarians in clerical grade (=middle-level service, "mittlerer Dienst"). In original language: "Unzulänglichkeiten waren nur eben soviel vorhanden, daß man nicht zu besorgen brauchte, sie möchten eines Tages wegen allzu großer Vortrefflichkeit auf einem feurigen Wagen gen Himmel geholt werden" :-)