Press release: SUB Director moves to FIZ Karlsruhe

No. 150 - 11.10.2023

Professor Wolfram Horstmann will head Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure

Professor Wolfram Horstmann, Director of the Göttingen State and University Library (SUB) in Lower Saxony since 2014, will be moving to the renowned FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure as President and CEO in January 2024. The Institute is a member of the Leibniz Association and one of the large institutions for scientific information infrastructures in Germany. The central public mission of the Institute is to provide research worldwide with scientific information, to further develop services and to conduct its own research. Knowledge transfer and innovation are further areas of responsibility. Horstmann succeeds Sabine Brünger-Weilandt as President and CEO, who has had a lasting impact on this central position for scientific information infrastructures in Germany and for the research-based economy over a long period of time.

Horstmann's near ten-year term as Director of the SUB represents the expansion of the SUB as one of the leading national and international research libraries. The further development of digital research infrastructures for scientific data and services, as well as the development of different roles for libraries in the 21st century have been a part of this. Strengthening the SUB's pioneering role in the topics of "Open Access", "Digital Humanities" and "Open Science", the founding of the "eResearch Alliance" to support Göttingen researchers as well as the SUB's active partnership in research projects at Göttingen Campus, nationally and internationally, are just a few examples of these successful activities.

“We would like to thank Wolfram Horstmann for his outstanding work for the SUB and wish him all the best and much success in his new position at the FIZ in Karlsruhe,” said Professor Metin Tolan, President of the University of Göttingen. “We are proud that this key international position has been filled by a personality from Göttingen. This is further proof of the excellent reputation that our SUB enjoys internationally.”

Wolfram Horstmann has been Director of the Göttingen State and University Library since 2014. Previously, he worked as Associate Director at the Bodleian Libraries of Oxford University from 2012 to 2014 and as Chief Information Officer for Scientific Information at Bielefeld University from 2007 to 2011.  The trained biologist received his doctorate in Bielefeld in 2003 and is honorary professor at the Institute for Library and Information Science of the Humboldt University in Berlin since 2017.