Ojāra Zandera darba gadi bibliotēkā (1968–2000)

Abstract

Ojārs Zanders commenced his career in the Fundamental Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR, the Latvian Academic Library (LAB, today – the University of Latvia Academic Library) in 1968. It was the initiative of the former head of the Misiņš Library, bibliographer Kārlis Egle, to entrust O. Zanders with the materials collected by the bibliophile Jānis Misiņš and himself. O. Zanders worked as the head of the library’s Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books for 25 years, and his time of work in the library spanned 32 years. The first task was to organize the accumulated and uninventorized materials, to introduce into the collections the manuscripts of the writers who had been exiled to Siberia and whose works were inaccessible to readers for political reasons. The great achievement, which must be particularly acknowledged, is that O. Zanders enriched the library collections with the manuscripts of literary scholar Alfrēds Goba, writer Kārlis Kraujiņš, poet Antons Bārda and other distinctive materials of cultural history. He was overseeing than 30 000 rare, ancient and unique books, starting with manuscript books dating back to the end of the 13th century, incunabula, paleotypes, the first printed works of Riga up to the latest publications. O. Zanders has created numerous exhibitions dedicated to the themes related to the history and culture of publishing, literature, history of sciences; he led tours and presented reports on publishing, Latvian and foreign literature, participated with reports on publishing and culture in Riga at international scientific conferences in Latvia, Germany, Poland, Russia, Estonia and Norway. O. Zanders authored many publications and books. In 2000, his monograph dedicated to Riga’s 800th anniversary “Senās Rīgas grāmatniecība un kultūra Hanzas pilsētu kopsakarā (13.–17. gs.)” –“Book Publishing and Culture of Ancient Riga in Context of the Hanseatic Cities (13th–17th Centuries)” was published, and received the main prize in the book art competition.