Stadtbibliothek Bremen: Access to reading is a human right

Thursday, 11 September 2025 Books+Publishing

With libraries, their work, and free access to information under increasing threat around the world, B+P and the Melbourne UNESCO City of Literature Office reached out to libraries in other designated cities of literature to ask them about their libraries, their systems, their triumphs, their challenges, and the messages they want to share with the world.

This week we hear from the Stadtbibliothek in Bremen, Germany:

Home to the Bremen Town Musicians, made famous by the Brothers Grimm, Bremen is Germany’s seventh City of Literature and home to one of the largest libraries in northern Germany – Stadtbibliothek Bremen. The library boasts approximately 2.5 million visits annually, making it the city’s most visited cultural institution.

The library’s predecessor ‘Lesehalle in Bremen’, which opened in 1902, adopted ‘Books for All’ as its mission. Over a century later, Stadtbibliothek Bremen still holds the same core value, said Stadtbibliothek Bremen director Lucia Werder.

‘Stadtbibliothek Bremen aims to provide a public and universally accessible service, making a sustainable contribution to meeting the educational, cultural and information tasks of Bremen. It operates to serve and meet the needs of library users. It is a place for social and cultural communication,’ Werder said.

Today, the library is spread across nine locations, including a central library (home to a giant chess set and e-piano), six branch libraries, a mobile library and a prison library, allowing it to reach as much of the community as possible. More than three million media items are loaned out each year from the library’s extensive digital catalogue, including e-books, streamed films and more.

Stadtbibliothek Bremen mobile library

The library also has a strong focus on cultivating its collection for young readers. Through an online monthly book club, library members between the ages of 15–23 receive book covers and blurbs of current new releases via email, which they can rate with just a few clicks. The library then purchases the highest-rated books, allowing young readers to directly impact what books are available to them.

This is just one of the ways that Stadtbibliothek Bremen keeps an open channel between visitors and the library. ‘Wherever possible, we involve customers and cooperation partners directly in the conception of programs, services and the redesign of spaces,’ said Werder. ‘We have had very good experiences with customer surveys, for example. The results were much more customised and our customers’ identification with the library was further strengthened.’

Programming plays a central role in fostering reading and literary engagement for everyone in the community. ‘We offer many playful formats that inspire a love of reading and combine analogue and digital media,’ said Werder.

‘Poems for little gnomes’ is a playful language development program for children under the age of three; Fakehunter is a simulation game on the topic of fake news; all the libraries (barring the prison library) have a resident picture book cinema, where picture books are screened page by page, accompanied by live reading.

The library regularly offers workshops on media and information literacy, STEM and robotics, and ‘TagTool’a series of drawing, animating and storytelling workshops. Aimed at people aged 12 and over, these workshops are led by visual artists, illustrators, authors and storytellers such as Ayumi Yoshikawa, Johann Büsen, Mario Ellert and Jeff Hemmer. Participants are ‘taught how to use digital drawing tools so that they can express themselves artistically in an uninhibited and self-confident manner,’ said Werder. To reach beyond the walls of the libraries, Stadtbibliothek Bremen regularly partners with external organisations and maintains a presence at neighbourhood festivals and activities, trade fairs for specific community groups like senior citizens, and library bike programs in the park and at the outdoor pool. As one of the last free spaces in society, the library provides a freely available space for those with less resources and support.

Stadtbibliothek Bremen Vegesack branch library

The Bremen Prison Library forms a valuable part of the library’s outreach efforts. The only regular branch of a Stadtbibliothek behind prison walls in Germany, the library allows inmates to access the online Bremen library network and choose from 8000 media items, which are overseen by a specialist librarian. Awarded the VGH Foundation Library Prize 2016, it has been recognised for its role in bringing books to those behind bars, broadening access to reading as a human right.

Through language cafes, meetings and exchanges, job application training and consumer advice, the library actively promotes integration and resource-sharing for all community members. One of its community initiatives, the ‘Library of Things’ offers all users aged 18 and over the opportunity to borrow items instead of buying them. An extensive selection of technology, craft, outdoor and hobby items are available for library users to choose from. The ‘Library of Things’ is not only beneficial to the local community but also the environment.

Stadtbibliothek Bremen central library

Werder’s key message to other libraries is to include stakeholders as much as possible in the library’s operations. ‘Wherever possible, we involve customers and cooperation partners directly in the conception of programmes, services and the redesign of spaces,’ said Werder. ‘We have had very good experiences with actions such as the Design Thinking method, customer surveys and open space formats. The results were much more customised and our customers’ identification with their library was further strengthened.’

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