1 The FES Library 's support of a political library in Dodoma(Tanzania): a different approach to preserving the memory of a count ry (Marcus Sommerstange, Library of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation) The Library of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation(FES Library) is one of the few special libraries in Germany that play an active part in the system of special subject collections which intends to provide access to every book that has been published world-wide to researchers and scientists all over Germany. Within this system the FES Library provides access to its huge collection of primary publications of trade unions and political parties from Germany and many European countries. Be­sides this, the FES Library has managed to take an active part in the provision of relevant digital contents through its digitizing activities, partly even realized as IALHI projects. 1 The main pillars of this collection are both the close connections of the FES Library with many labour movement or­ganisations and the technical and vocational skills of its staff members, especially in the field of the library and information sciences. Although the library community in Germany values the work of the FES Library and acknowledges its different activities in providing professional librarian competence for the humanities and social sciences, this aspect of the Library's work did not play a decisive role within the remaining parts of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation(FES). The main focuses of the FES work become manifest in the keywords of its activities: Development Cooperation, International Dialogue, Research and Con­sulting, Political Education and Scholarship. 2 Within these activities of the FES the Library is part of the Research and Consulting area with the main attribute to preserve the memory of the labour movement. This characteristic of the FES Library certainly stresses especially the aspect Research of the FES work, which also was visible through the organisational integration of this department within the Historical Research Centre of the FES which was dissolved in 2009 due to personal changes though. But the aspect of Consulting played not a really important part within the Library's work in the past. This chanced almost two years ago when a special project of the FES office in Tanzania was re­vived. The FES offices in developing countries have constantly tried to support the development of the political culture through helping in building democratic structures or engaging in educating young politicians. Equally important is the support of political institutions, and in Tanzania this led to close connections with the ruling political party Chama Cha Mapinduzi(CCM). This party has been the most important political force in Tanzania since independence in 1962(at that time under the name TANU – Tanganyika African National Union), especially for the long period before a multi-party system was established in 1992. Due to this fact it is a simple and logical consequence that the relatively young history of this country is essentially documented through papers, publica­tions and documents of TANU and CCM. The CCM established a library in 1978 in its headquarters in Dodoma, Tanzania's capital. This insti­tution, although always addressed as“library”, was and is a place which not only should serve as scientific library for CCM members, but always had the function of a repository for CCM publica­tions and in the future might also include the great diversity of party documents that illustrate the or­ganisation and structure of this party and at the same time document the development of the whole 1 One example for these activities ist the IALHI Project: Programmatic Documents of the Socialist International and the European Trade Union Confederation and affiliates(URL: http://library.fes.de/library/ialhi/ial_fram.html). 2 See also the English language leaflet about the FES work(URL: http://www.fes.de/inhalt/Dokumente_2009/FES %20SD%202009%20GB.pdf).