Working with Libraries: The Beginning

Abstract

Abstract I am fortunate to have spent my professional life at a university with a great library, and until I encountered East European libraries, I never dreamed how much damage 45 years of neglect could do. Since the Mellon Foundation has had a distinguished record of assisting research libraries in the United States, including the great independent research libraries such as the Folger, the Huntington, the Newberry, and the Morgan, it did not take much persuasion to get the green light from the Foundation to investigate what we could do for them in Eastern Europe. In 1990, the first year of Mellon activities in the region, there were so many small business development, computing and connectivity projects that I had only limited time to deal with libraries. But I did make some important contacts, many of which led to lasting relations between Mellon and some East European libraries, and made many friends in the library world. Even in that first year, I met in Hungary Béla Mader of the József Attila University in Szeged, Olga Gomba of Kossuth Lajos University in Debrecen, Miklós Fogarassy of the National Széchényi Library, and Gébor Vélyi of the Parliamentary Library in Budapest. In Czechoslovakia, I met Vojtéch Balík, National Librarian of Czechoslovakia and his deputies, Martin Svoboda and Adolf Knoll, and in Poland, Jadwiga Krajewska of the Warsaw University Library and Jan Pirozynski of the Jagiellonian University Library. While we did start to make some grants directly to East European libraries, much of the first year, and even some of the second, was spent in learning about library systems, needs, and agendas. But our work in the three (and later four) countries did not move in parallel, and the first grants of significant size in Hungary were in 1990, in Poland in 1991, and in Czechoslovakia in 1992. There were three principal types of library projects that the foundation funded: improvement of collections, training of librarians, and library automation. By the end, the third category had received by far the largest commitment of funds.