The ZKM Media Library offers one of the fullest collections of contemporary music, videos and literature on 20th century art. It is a treasure-house for the researcher, but also a place in which one can simply rummage around and find information. Information on artists and works can be called up directly from the data-base, video and audio CDs quickly looked at and played on the juke-box system. The internet can also be used to conduct research into the collections (http://biblio.zkm.de, best viewed with Mozilla Firefox). The audiovisual media and books can only be used in situ, as this is a reference collection. The Media Library consists of the audio collection, the video collection and the library.

Research places and seminar rooms:
Individual places for academic research can be used during the usual opening times; they must be booked in advance. two seminar rooms in with facilities for working with the Mediathek's audio and video collections are available to academics and groups of up to 20 people.
They must be booked at least two working days in advance: telephone 8100-1717 or e-mail mediathek@zkm.de.

Contact:
Regina Strasser-Gnädig (strasser@zkm.de)
Tel.: +49 (0)721 8100-1700
Fax: +49 (0)721 8100-1709
http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/e/institute/mediathek or
http://biblio.zkm.de (Catalogue, best viewed with Mozilla Firefox)

Admission free

The ZKM and the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung have a joint library containing about 36,000 books, 650 CD-ROMs and 120 DVDs. About 120 magazines are also available. The library concentrates on 20th century art, focusing particularly on media art, architecture, design, media theory, film, photography and electric acoustic music. This is complemented by classical art history, theatre and philosophy. The whole stock is open and systematically arranged to make it possible to search for literature directly on the shelf. PC workstations are provided for examining various art and reference titles on CD-ROM.

The audio collection specializes in contemporary music. At present it includes about 13,500 titles, complemented by scores, specialist books, photographs, posters etc. The collection is divided into twelve areas, with the International Digital Electricacoustic Musicarchive IDEAMA as a particularly important feature. This contains all the important works of electrical acoustic music from the beginnings to the present day. The audio collection holds some of the principal Modern works and the archive of DegeM, the German electric acoustic Music Society, and also blues, jazz, rock, pop and film music and one of the world's largest Soundscape collections. Dieter Mankau's four historic Hörstühle (listening chairs; documenta 8) offer a special ambience for this.

The aim of the video collection is to increase awareness of the art video. Thus the collection is the first of its kind in Germany to offer such a comprehensive presentation on the history of video art. Today it brings together both 633 individual titles from the what are seen internationally as the most important artistic positions and working groups, and also 660 issues of the video magazine "Infermental", a unique record of video art in the 80s. The prizewinning entries for the \\international\media\art\award (formerly International Award for Video Art), an annual event run jointly with the Südwestrundfunk, make up another independent area of the collection. All the tapes in the collection can be played via the juke-box system at ten stations designed by the Canadian media artist Luc Courchesne. The tapes have also been transferred to CD-R using a high quality digital process. The most important tasks for the future are to restore the early video tapes and also extending the collection to include internet projects.

© 2002-2008 Netzwerk Mediatheken / Network of Multimedia Resource Centres