The German copyright exception in favour of dedicated terminals on the premises of libraries, museums and archives ( 52b UrhG) allows these institutions to make their analogue collections digitally available. It is based on the European Information Society Directive and was implemented in the German Copyright Act in 2008. The author examines this copyright exception in detail because it is very difficult to handle in practice. Furthermore, it was the subject of a preliminary ruling before the ECJ. Nevertheless, the current legal situation stands in contradiction to the needs of education and science for an up-to-date access to information. Therefore, the author presents alternatives like the plans of the German Federal Government to implement a fair use clause and makes an own proposal for the next copyright reform.