We began the last day of the first week at the Library of the Faculty of Arts at Charles University. This central library is for the entire faculty (department), which has 7,424 students and 750 employees.
Dr. Ludmila Ticha, the Head Librarian, spoke to us first on academic libraries in the Czech Republic. After 1989 (the end of communism), librarians and libraries became more prestigious and reputable. Today there are three main library associations and three annual conferences, and libraries are primarily funded by the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports and the Ministry of Culture.
Afterwards we had a tour of the library, which just opened in April (they are merging the departmental libraries within the Faculty, though each department does continue to maintain its own library). This is the main study room.
They still use card catalogs (as so beautifully demonstrated by Dierdre, one of the students in our program), because automating the collection is not yet complete.
The library has room for 100,000 books in the open stacks.
Future librarian!
I still miss card catalogs. Sometimes I think research is just a bit too easy nowadays.
ReplyDeleteUm, my name is spelled Deirdre. Amazing, I remember this conversation from the bar.
ReplyDeleteHaha! Deja vu. I told you I would mangle your name. I'm just going to call you Anonymous from now on.
ReplyDelete