Yvonne Schürer's master's thesis entitled "What does 'decolonization' mean for libraries?" has been published in the series "Berliner Handreichungen zur Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft" at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The publication is available digitally. Yvonne Schürer is the director of the HGB library.
Decolonizing is a topic that is only gradually arriving in the library field in Germany. There is a lack of German-language literature on the subject. In order to facilitate the entry into the topic for the professional audience here, the first part of this paper presents the current conceptual understanding of decolonization and shows the interface of decolonial theory with librarianship. Conceptual interpretation and interpretation difficulties are explained with the help of a state of the art and literature review. In the empirical part, a type-forming content analysis leads to the development of a category system of possibilities for action. A total of nine categories are defined and associated examples of application are added. The practical implementation of these options for action is then illustrated by means of three case studies and the translation of theory into practice is discussed.