Elisabeth Niggemann

Elisabeth Niggemann (born April 2, 1954) is a German librarian specializing in the digitization of cultural heritage resources. From 1999 to 2019, she served as the director general of the German National Library.

Education and career Elisabeth Niggemann was born in Dortmund on April 2, 1954. In college she studied biology and English, receiving a Ph.D. in biology from Ruhr University Bochum. In 1989, she became head of cataloguing and subject indexing at the University and State Library at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf; in 1994, she became director of that library.

Niggemann became the director general of the German National Library in 1999. In 2019, she announced her retirement, with Frank Scholze taking her place as director general as of January 1, 2020.

Library leadership

In 2010, Niggemann was a member of the Comité des Sages, the European Union's high-level reflection group, examining the digitization of Europe's cultural heritage. She chaired the Conference of European National Librarians, a network of Europe’s national libraries, between 2005 and 2011. She was reelected as chair in September 2017, leading the board of the foundation to maintain the sustainability of Europeana. She has also written or co-written a number of reports on cultural heritage strategies, including The New Renaissance (2011) and Fachinformationsdienste statt Sondersammelgebiete (2014).

In March 2018, Niggeman was awarded Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.