All librarians come face to face with design every day in their interaction with a library building, its furniture, and its equipment. Librarians in design libraries are in addition concerned with information, about and for designing. The library of the German Design Council constitutes the most comprehensive collection of design information available to the public in the former Federal Republic, and is complemented by a photo and slide archive, including company literature and a newly-established video collection. Although no use is made of modern information technology, user-friendly information services, including a periodicals indexing service in the form of cards which are also available to external subscribers, are provided. However, the dissemination of design information further afield is constrained by three factors. In the first place, designers themselves do not fully appreciate how libraries can help them. Secondly, there is little co-ordination in Germany of design libraries of different kinds and in different regions and administrative units. Thirdly, most German design libraries are insufficiently resourced to allow them to do more than fulfil a specific function within the context of an institution or a locale. Nonetheless, librarians of German design libraries have formed an action group and have taken the first steps towards working together, while the German Design Council’s publication Design Bericht (1989) has provided a directory of design institutions. Design Bericht will appear every two years; a similar publication encompassing the whole of Europe is envisaged. (A full English version follows the original text in German. Please note that this paper was written before the unification of Germany).

An insufficient flow of information leads to inadequately designed products. There are several reasons why designers do not receive good information. Designers have no training in research, and rarely conduct their own research studies. They therefore must rely on research performed by persons in other fields. This information, in turn, is poorly adaptable to the designer’s needs. An information gap exists. Contributing to the problem are project schedules and budgets that unreasonably limit the amount of time that can be invested in the gathering and assimilation of information. On the horizon is the utilization of multi-disciplinary research teams that will apply their efforts to design. In the meantime, information gathering is a tedious process that needs to be performed as expediently and as painlessly as possible. A librarian with an understanding of the design process can be a vital member of a product design team.

Libraria is a small business which provides a visiting library service to architectural practices. Although practices vary, their information needs are similar, and are met from the several categories employed by Libraria to organise information materials: technical literature, trade literature, samples, consultants and contractors, company information, fine art and reference, maps, journals, and in-house material. Information from these categories must be available as required to support successive stages in the building design process from inception to completion. Library services in the construction industry have to provide the right information at the right time, without being a drain on the resources of practices which can only survive as profitable businesses; the librarian must be seen to be an ever-helpful source of practical information.

Everybody is a designer, or at least has a right to be involved as an active participant in the design of the world around them. Information needed for successful design includes both ‘expertise’, and also, information from people themselves, about themselves and their localities. Professionals, who may regard expertise as their exclusive property, tend sometimes to neglect this second category of information; non-professionals who engage in design are familiar with their own requirements but may need more technical information than is readily available to them. Those professional designers who interpret their role as one of facilitating participation in design, will willingly share their expertise while at the same time appreciating the value of the information and skills which non-professionals can contribute. Libraries, and other information agencies, can also help to make both categories of information available to professionals and non-professionals alike. In a global context, there is a need for indigenous knowledge and traditions to be recognised and respected by ‘experts’ from those countries in which professional specialisms are highly developed, and by the growing design professions in developing countries themselves.

Since 1839 a million or more designs have been lodged with the British Patent Office. Millions more have been registered in other jurisdictions, for example, in America (from 1842), India (from 1881), and Japan (from 1910). Registered designs are not confined to ‘Good Design’ (according to Modernist Western criteria) but neither do they provide a comprehensive record of design innovation: whether designs from a given country are or are not registered abroad may be less a measure of the country’s design activity, more an indication either of the refusal by an Imperial power to recognise indigenous design as ‘original’, or of whether it is advantageous to a developing country to respect international copyright. Nonetheless, registered designs, which are documented in great detail and may be accompanied by precise visual representations, constitute one of the most extensive series of primary source materials and statistics for an objective, world history of design. The fact that they have been overlooked by design historians can be partially explained by ignorance of their existence or whereabouts, and difficulties of access, but also reflects a limited, Eurocentric approach to design and its history.