The National Library of Romania's Precursors: Early Beginnings through the Communist Period

Abstract

The territory of contemporary Romania consists of three main provinces: Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania. The history of the National Library of Romania has generated controversy among many Romanian scholars. Some regard it as a continuation of one of the oldest libraries in Wallachia, the St Sava College Library, which from 1832 enjoyed legal deposit privileges. Others have regarded it as a Communist creation of the 1950s, with the establishment of the Central State Library of the People's Republic of Romania, which was founded in 1955 and metamorphosed into the National Library of Romania in 1990. In 1951 Communist-type institutions such as the Chamber of the Book and the State Book Collection had been established. The main mission of the former was to compile the current national bibliography based on legal deposit copies, while the latter resulted from the confiscation between 1951 and 1970 of the contents of old libraries, which were then redistributed to a small number of libraries and research institutions. In 1970 148,000 volumes from this collection were incorporated into the Central State Library.