Bismuth germanate glasses are technologically important for a number of reasons, including fibre-optical and laser applications, non-linear optical glasses, IR transmitting glasses, lead-free glasses and ferroelectric glass-ceramics. The structural role of Bi is important in determining the optical properties, but nevertheless there is virtually no detailed structural information available for these glasses. We seek to study the structure over as wide a composition range as possible, investigating the environments of Ge and Bi. Does the average Ge-O coordination increase above 4 (a germanate anomaly)? Does Bi3+ behave solely as a network former, with an active lone pair, and an asymmetric coordination shell with a low coordination number? The answers to these two questions are likely to be closely related.