BIBCARD for Students in Bremen: Direct Access to the City Library with UCS@school

One tap on the iPad – and students in Bremen are in the city library. A well-thought-out interaction between school IT, data protection, and pedagogy creates direct access to extracurricular educational resources.

A library card can be more than just a piece of paper – it is a key to education, participation, and reading promotion. When approached digitally, with low barriers and in a privacy-friendly way, real opportunities emerge for everyone – without bureaucracy, using technology that is already in place.

A library card opens doors: to stories, knowledge, digital learning resources, and much more. Yet access often fails due to very practical hurdles – a missing form, a forgotten signature, or the card is at home when it’s needed.

In Bremen, we wanted to change exactly that. Our goal: a simple, digital library card accessible to all students – no paperwork, no waiting time, directly usable on the school iPad. This was made possible through close cooperation between the Bremen City Library and the IT department of the Senator for Children and Education – based on the existing UCS@school infrastructure, which we use in Bremen for central identity management in the school sector.

The result: a low-barrier, privacy-friendly solution that significantly simplifies access to educational and media resources. Our digital BIBCARD demonstrates how IT and pedagogy can go hand in hand – and how existing systems can be intelligently connected to advance digital education in a practical way.

Libraries are more than just places to borrow books. They are free, low-barrier learning environments open to everyone – regardless of social background. For many children and young people, they are an important place for research, reading, learning, or simply discovering.

Especially in the school context, it is worthwhile to look beyond the classroom: libraries complement lessons, promote reading skills, and enable self-directed learning. All the more important, then, that access is as simple as possible – ideally through the devices and accounts students already use every day.

The idea of the digital BIBCARD was obvious: if all students in Bremen already have an iPad and centralized login credentials for educational services, why shouldn’t the library card work just as easily and digitally?

An early concept was, by the way, significantly more analog: a plastic card printed with access credentials. A simple solution to take with you – at least in theory. But with production costs of around two euros per card and large quantities required, this would have been difficult to finance for a city like Bremen. So, this idea was shelved for the time being.

With the widespread introduction of iPads for students, the framework conditions changed fundamentally. Suddenly, a digital device was available everywhere – and UCS@school provided a central identity management system that had already been well established for many years in Bremen’s school system.

Bremen has long followed a consistently centralized approach to school IT: the technical infrastructure for all public schools is provided by the IT department of the Senator for Children and Education – including standardized server and desktop environments, software deployment, helpdesk, and of course, central identity management for all students and teachers. This allowed us to build on existing structures from the very beginning.

As a result, the digital library card did not become an additional system, but rather a meaningful extension of what was already in place: instead of printed cards, we developed a solution together with the city library that works directly on school devices – secure, scalable, data protection compliant, and immediately ready to use for everyone.

From a technical perspective, the solution is far less spectacular than one might expect – and that’s precisely what makes it so compelling.

In this scenario, the Bremen City Library takes on the role of the service provider. It offers the digital services and has developed its own login page, which is connected to the schools’ central identity management system via the SAML protocol. The identity provider on our side is based on UCS@school in combination with Keycloak – a proven foundation on which many educational applications in Bremen already rely.

To integrate the city library, we simply registered a new service in Keycloak’s SAML setup. This was completed on our side in just a few steps – with no additional infrastructure and no major structural changes.

The only new addition was a small extension: for some of the city library’s services – such as film platforms or certain loan services – the user’s date of birth is required for youth protection reasons. This attribute had not previously been part of our school identity data. We therefore adapted the data export from the school administration software accordingly and transferred the date of birth into UCS@school’s OpenLDAP directory – making it available for the authentication process.

That’s it. No isolated solutions, no special technology – just consistent use of existing structures.

Especially in the school environment, data protection is not just a requirement but a foundation for trust. That’s why it was important to us from the start that the digital library card not only works, but also complies with data protection standards.

The principle behind it is as simple as it is effective: the city library only receives the information it truly needs – and nothing more. Only a pseudonymized user ID and the date of birth are transmitted. The user ID itself reveals no information that could identify the natural person.

To enable communication nonetheless, we created an additional email alias for each student’s existing email address: every student can receive emails at this system-internal address without having to disclose personal email data. For this purpose, the real name in the email address is replaced by a pseudonymized ID number.

This ensures that BIBCARD login credentials can be securely transmitted – while also preserving data privacy. For us, it’s a successful example of how functionality and data minimization don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but can complement each other in a meaningful way.

For students to use the digital BIBCARD, only a few clicks are needed. A so-called web clip is stored on the centrally managed school iPads – essentially a shortcut that leads directly to the Bremen City Library’s login page.

There, students are prompted to log in using their known credentials – the central school login they already use daily to access their iPads, emails, or learning platforms. After logging in, a digital BIBCARD is automatically generated, including a card number and matching password.

Both are not only displayed on the screen but also sent via email to the student’s internal school email address – in compliance with data protection regulations, as described in the previous section. The password is intentionally human-readable, making it easier to remember and enter.

Immediately after login, all of the city library’s digital services become available: from e-lending to foreign-language e-books, newspapers from over 100 countries, and age-appropriate video platforms. Once logged in, students can start right away – without detours, waiting times, or paperwork.

The first weeks after launching the digital BIBCARD have shown: the solution works – and it’s being used. Within the first six weeks alone, around 2,500 students created a digital library card and actively used the Bremen City Library’s digital offerings.

Feedback from schools has also been positive. The login works smoothly, the services are being used – and the concept is well received. One student summed it up perfectly: “Now that’s a really good idea you had!” – a better compliment for such a project is hard to come by.

Such feedback shows us: when barriers are low and the technology simply works, real access emerges – to media, to education, to independence. Of course, we also receive suggestions we see as motivation to improve further. Some students, for instance, wish for an easier way to save or re-display their username and password. We’re currently exploring how to make the user experience even more convenient – without compromising the data privacy-friendly structure.

What once failed due to missing signatures, lost forms, or forgotten library cards can now be accomplished with just a few clicks – directly on the school device, without bureaucratic obstacles. This not only relieves the burden on schools but also enables many children to access the city library in the first place.

With the digital BIBCARD, students can not only use the online services but also borrow books directly on-site in the library – simply using their iPad. Up to three books can be checked out this way.

The digital BIBCARD is a strong example of how new approaches can be realized using existing infrastructure. Without major additional systems, without complicated registration steps – but with the clear goal of creating real access.

This was made possible by combining central identity management with UCS@school, the widespread provision of iPads for students, and an open, collaborative partnership between school IT and the city library. The result is a solution that is technically simple, data protection-compliant, and above all, suitable for everyday use.

The project shows: when existing systems are intelligently connected and the needs of the users are kept in focus, digitalization in education can have a real impact – directly in the classroom, but also beyond.