In "Contemporary Needs and Possibilities to Improve the Exchange of Bibliographical Information/Data Between Administrative Libraries (with Special Reference to Modern Technologies)," a discussion of the exchange of machine-readable bibliographic records, Walter Niedermeyr (Federal Republic of Germany) advocates the development of German information retrieval systems as the first step toward online networks capable of providing shared cataloging, interlibrary loan, and cooperative acquisition facilities. He compares evolving communication and information technologies in North America and Europe, and proposes a continuous transition from an offline to an online interconnected bibliographic data system for German libraries. This would involve the transfer of data from magnetic tape services to central data files, investigation of the compatibility of data formats, and the development of programs to check for duplicate records. Also discussed are the offline processing of information, the design of information retrieval systems, the organization of data files, and character set problems. The paper concludes with a glossary of acronyms. (ESR)