THE LIBRARY SPHERE IN THE SECOND POLISH REPUBLIC: LEGISLATIVE REGULATION (1923-1939)

Abstract

This article analyzes the legislative provision for the libraries' functioning in the Second Polish Republic in the context of the socio-cultural processes of the interwar period of the 20th century. It is shown that the restoration of Poland (1918) led to a significant modification of cultural and educational processes in Western Ukraine, especially in Lviv, which became one of the centers of spiritual development of the Ukrainians and Poles. The authorities began to use pedagogical libraries, museums, and other educational institutions for national and cultural informing of the population, trying to turn them into an important segment in the complex educational component of educated members of society. This was reflected in the legislation. The author emphasizes that the legislative and regulatory acts of the central government and state administration were extremely important for the functioning of the library sphere. For the functioning of the library sphere, legislative and regulatory acts of the central authorities and government were extremely important. Transcripts of the plenary sessions of the Polish Sejm (Sprawozdania stenograficzne Sejmu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej), reflecting the specifics of parliamentary debates in the country's supreme legislative body on education and science, are analyzed. The author concludes that the end of the First World War and the Polish-Ukrainian war started a new phase in the development of the library sphere in the Ukrainian ethnic lands of Galicia. During this period, the Polish authorities, due to the separation of the political elite and other domestic and foreign policy factors 1920-1930s, failed to formulate a coherent state concept of library development and focused on the selective tolerance of public libraries, ignoring national minority book collections. Keywords: The Second Polish Republic, library, law, Polish Sejm and Senate.