Having run the commands braiam suggested, I now include this so one can see a before and after.

as the output before may have indicated a problem.

I see that in the previous apt-cache policy lib6, there was a version listed under "version table" that was not mentioned above version table. 

Whereas now that it works, every version listed below the text "version table" appears above it too.  

output from the command-  sudo apt-cache policy libc6
libc6:
  Installed: 2.17-5
  Candidate: 2.19-4
  Version table:
     2.19-4 0
        500 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ testing/main i386 Packages
 *** 2.17-5 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status